Preamble

The House met at half-past Two o'clock

PRAYERS

[Mr. SPEAKER in the Chair]

MESSAGE FROM THE QUEEN

IMMUNITIES AND PRIVILEGES

The VICE-CHAMBERLAIN OF THE HOUSEHOLD reported Her Majesty's Answer to the Address, as follows:

I have received your Address praying that the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (Immunities and Privileges) Order, 1961, be made in the form of the draft laid before Parliament.

I will comply with your request.

Oral Answers to Questions — SIERRA LEONE

Messages of Good Will

Mr. Boyden: asked the Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations what message of good will he has sent the Sierra Leone Government this day.

The Joint Under-Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations (Mr. Bernard Braine): My right hon. Friend is at present in Freetown. I am obtaining the text of the message which he is conveying personally to the Government of Sierra Leone, and will circulate it in the OFFICIAL REPORT.
My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister has also sent a cordial message of congratulations, and I feel sure that the House will wish to associate itself with it.

Mr. Boyden: While thanking the Minister for that announcement, may I ask him whether his right hon. Friend is, in fact, negotiating any economic aid or assistance with the Government of

Sierra Leone at the moment, and what the order of it might be?

Mr. Braine: That, Sir, is quite another question.

Oral Answers to Questions — COMMONWEALTH RELATIONS

Migration (Discussions)

Mr. Sorensen: asked the Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations what recent discussions have taken place between Her Majesty's Government and other Commonwealth Governments, and what information he has received in the course of these discussions of other consultations between Commonwealth Governments, in respect of migration within the Commonwealth.

Mr. Braine: As regards migration from the West Indies, I have nothing to add to the statement made by my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister on 13th April. The only other recent discussions have been with the Governments of India and Pakistan. These were of a routine nature relating to the control of emigration from those countries. I am not aware of any recent consultations between other Commonwealth Governments on the subject of migration.

Mr. Sorensen: Does not the Minister realise that this is a rather unsatisfactory Answer in view of the very great need for some kind of co-ordinated and cooperative consultation among all members of the Commonwealth on this very vital matter? Can the hon. Gentleman say whether what has been done in this connection is what was promised some time ago?

Mr. Braine: As far as immigration into this country is concerned, which is what I think the hon. Gentleman may have in mind, the House will recall that my hon. and learned Friend the Joint Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department made it quite clear on 17th February that the Government have no intention of imposing control on the entry of British subjects into this country without prior consultation with the Commonwealth Governments concerned. But with regard to the general question, as to whether there should be full Commonwealth talks on the question of the free


movement of British subjects throughout the Commonwealth, all I can say is that this will be borne in mind.

Mr. Fisher: Could my hon. Friend tell the House whether the Government are in favour, in principle, of what I might call cross-migration within the Commonwealth under which countries which need immigrants, such as Australia, New Zealand and Canada, might, perhaps, take them from countries like the West Indies, India, and Pakistan which need to emigrate some of their surplus manpower?

Mr. Braine: I think that it would be quite improper for me to comment on a question of that kind, because a matter which concerns the recipient countries concerns them primarily and the initiative in a matter of this kind must come from them.

Mr. Sorensen: In view of the unsatisfactory nature of the reply, I beg to give notice that I shall raise this matter on the Adjournment at the earliest possible moment.

Oral Answers to Questions — UNION OF SOUTH AFRICA

South-West Africa (Mandate)

Mr. Stonehouse: asked the Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations if he will take steps at the United Nations to secure the transfer of the mandate for South-West Africa from the Union of South Africa to the United Kingdom, in view of South Africa becoming a Republic.

Mr. Braine: No, Sir. The changes of status of the Union of South Africa after 31st May will in no way affect its rights and obligations under the mandate.

Mr. Stonehouse: Is the Under-Secretary of State aware that this is a very important matter which affects the standing of Britain in the eyes of the world, in view of what appears to be our primary responsibility? Will the hon. Gentleman at least consider, and ask his right hon. Friend the Secretary of State to consider, consulting other members of the Commonwealth with a view to this mandate becoming a Commonwealth responsibility?

Mr. Braine: I would refer the hon. Member to the explanation of the constitutional

position governing the South-West Africa mandate question given by my right hon. and noble Friend, Lord Alport, in the debate on 15th December. It was put so well on that occasion that I do not think there is any need for me to add to it today.

Mr. Callaghan: Whatever rights the South African Government may have possessed, have they not forfeited them by their failure to account for their trusteeship to the responsible authorities, including the United Nations, as they have been repeatedly requested to do, and in view of the fact that they have flouted the authority of the United Nations on many occasions, why does he say that he will take no steps to remove the mandate from their control?

Mr. Braine: The first pant of the hon. Gentleman's supplementary question is a matter for the United Nations in any event. The question is under consideration by the International Court, and it would be quite improper for me to comment further.

Mr. Stonehouse: Would not the hon. Gentleman agree that the Union Government would not have got this mandate unless it had been in the Commonwealth at that time?

Mr. Braine: That, of course, is another question. [HON. MEMBERS: "Answer it."] I am going to answer it. The mandate was granted to His Britannic Majesty as the King, the constitutional head, of the Union of South Africa, a sovereign independent country at the time.

Mr. Callaghan: But is not South Africa now a Republic?

Oral Answers to Questions — HIGH COMMISSION TERRITORIES

Economic Development

Mr. Marquand: asked the Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations whether he intends to implement in full the recommendations of the Morse Report on the economic development of Bechuanaland, Basutoland and Swaziland.

Mr. Braine: I am not yet in a position to add anything to what was stated by


my right hon. Friend in reply to a Question by the right hon. Gentleman on 23rd March, and to what I said in the debate on the Republic of South Africa Bill on Monday.

Mr. Marquand: Why is there this continual delay? The Morse Commission's Report was published much more than a year ago, and we have already heard from the Government that they have had promises of a very substantial contribution towards this plan from international agencies. Why cannot the Government now say whether they accept the whole Report in principle, even if they are not able to tell us the pace at which they will proceed with the detailed implementation of it?

Mr. Braine: The right hon. Gentleman and the House can be assured that we shall make an announcement as soon as a decision has been reached. I cannot be expected to name a date now, but I can assure the House that we are taking full account of the recommendations in the Morse Report and are actively considering ways in which they can be implemented. I should add, in view of what the right hon. Gentleman has said, that Commonwealth Development and Welfare funds have been made available already to enable the Director of Overseas Services to undertake further aerial survey work in all three Territories and, although this is not strictly a matter on which the Morse Commission reported, the right hon. Gentleman may be aware that we have approved increases in teachers' salaries earlier this year.

Mr. Marquand: In view of developments in South Africa generally, will the hon. Gentleman at least assure the House that his right hon. Friend regards the rapid economic development of the three High Commission Territories as the highest priority in the economic field for which he is responsible?

Mr. Braine: I can give that assurance.

Mr. Marquand: asked the Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations whether he will invite all independent members of the Commonwealth in Africa to join with the United Kingdom, through the Special Commonwealth African Aid Plan, in the rapid economic development of Bechuanaland, Basutoland and Swaziland.

Mr. Braine: I do not think that the development needs of the High Commission Territories are of a type that could be met in this way.

Mr. Marquand: Are there not experts on administration and economic development generally in the independent countries in Africa whose services could be used most effectively? Would not this be a valuable way of introducing the kind of co-operation for which the special Commonwealth Aid for Africa Plan was designed? Would it not be to the mutual encouragement of the people of the three High Commission Territories and of the independent countries of Africa?

Mr. Braine: As the right hon. Gentleman knows, if we exclude South Africa from the category of nations which he mentioned, Ghana, Nigeria and Sierra Leone are themselves recipients of development aid from the United Kingdom, and we should not overlook any suitable sources of assistance. It is unlikely that the independent countries of West Africa, grappling with serious development problems of their own, will have resources to spare for the High Commission Territories, whose problems are different from theirs, and, where they are similar, the countries concerned have to give their own needs the first priority.

Mr. Marquand: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that I am suggesting technical assistance, not capital assistance? Did we not have an assurance only the day before yesterday, when we debated the Department of Technical Co-operation Bill in the House, that technical assistance would be mutual wherever possible? Is this not an ideal opportunity, even if it is only the seconding of two or three Africans from the independent Territories to undertake this?

Mr. Braine: I think that the operative word is "ideal". If something like this could be done, no doubt it would be done, but there is an acute shortage in Africa of the kind of technical assistance which the right hon. Gentleman has in mind.

African Postmasters, Basutoland

Mr. Brockway: asked the Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations on what grounds African postmasters in Basutoland have been excluded from


the senior service since 1948 whilst fulfilling the same duties as white postmasters in the senior service.

Mr. Braine: This Question appears to be based on a misapprehension. The senior service in Basutoland ceased to exist in 1959.

Mr. Brockway: Even if that is technically true, may I ask the hon. Gentleman whether it is not the fact that up to 1948, African postmasters were of the same status as the European postmasters in Basutoland, but that in 1958, one African postmaster was reduced, and they have been reduced ever since? May I also ask the hon. Gentleman whether it is not desirable to end apartheid in our own Protectorates in South Africa?

Mr. Braine: I do not accept for one moment that apartheid exists. Since 1959, all postmasters have fallen within Division 2 of the new structure of the Civil Service introduced in that year, and the salaries paid to officials are the same, irrespective of race.

Oral Answers to Questions — EDUCATION

Farm Institutes

Sir H. Legge-Bourke: asked the Minister of Education if he will make a statement regarding his plans for the building of farm institutes and similar establishments in England and Wales.

The Minister of Education (Sir David Eccles): Yes, Sir. I am anxious that everything possible shall be done to further the development of agricultural education and for the year 1961–62 I have authorised a building programme of about £¾ million for farm institutes and other similar establishments in England and Wales. This is substantially more than in any previous year. I will with permission circulate the details in the OFFICIAL REPORT.
It is the intention to continue building at this level for the next few years until the main needs are met. I shall shortly be inviting local education authorities to submit their proposals for 1962–63.

Sir H. Legge-Bourke: While thanking my right hon. Friend and congratulating him upon his statement, may I ask him whether he will ensure that, before the final sites are decided upon for the building

of these institutes, all the experienced gained from the initial effort by the Isle of Ely Education Authority in setting up the horticultural institute at Wisbech will be taken into account, because it is very important that the land that lies around the institutes should be suitable, as well as the actual sites of the buildings?

Sir D. Eccles: I certainly will take that experience into account.

Mr. Willey: Is the Minister satisfied that he will attract the teachers who are required, as indicated by the Lampard-Vachell Report?

Sir D. Eccles: It is going to be difficult, but we have a variety of plans for doing so.

Following is the list of establishments at which major improvements will he undertaken:


County
Establishment


England:


Bedfordshire
Mander College of Further Education (Agricultural Department).


Buckinghamshire
County Demonstration Farm.


Cumberland/Westmorland.
Farm Institute.


Essex
Institute of Agriculture.


Hertfordshire
Institute of Agriculture and Horticulture.


Lincolnshire (Kesteven).
Farm Institute.


Nottinghamshire
Farm Institute.


Oxfordshire
Rycote Wood College of Rural Crafts.


Shropshire
Farm Institute.


Somerset
Farm Institute.


Surrey
Farm Institute.


Yorkshire (West Riding).
Farm Institute.


Wales:


Breconshire
Rural Technical Institute.


Cardiganshire
Farmers' Education Centre, Felinfach.

Caning

Mr. K. Lewis: asked the Minister of Education how many education authorities forbid headmasters and teachers to use the cane; and how many authorities forbid teachers but allow headmasters to use the cane.

Sir D. Eccles: Individual authorities have discretion in this matter, and the information asked for is not available. I would hope that local education authorities in their turn leave to head teachers the choice of disciplinary methods.

Mr. Lewis: Would not my right hon. Friend agree that he would do much to help his right hon. Friend the Home Secretary if he requested education authorities throughout the country to allow corporal punishment, and not to forbid it as some of them do?

Sir D. Eccles: I think that this is a matter in which we should leave the local education authority a discretion, but, in fact, good discipline in the schools, which is very necessary, is largely a matter for the head teacher, and if the head teacher thinks that the use of the cane is one method, I hope that he will be supported.

Size of Classes, Essex

Mr. Sorensen: asked the Minister of Education if he will state, approximately, the number of school classes in the County of Essex in which the pupils number over thirty; and by what date it is estimated that no classes over that number will exist in the county.

Sir D. Eccles: In January, 1960, there were 3,538 junior classes and 2,425 senior classes with over 30 pupils. The supply of teachers is going to improve during this decade, but I cannot forecast the date when classes of this size will be eliminated in any particular county.

Mr. Sorensen: Does not this look rather serious? Can the Minister say approximately how many classes have over forty pupils? Can he hold out no hope of a progressive reduction in the size of classes in the near future?

Sir D. Eccles: In the primary schools there are 1,518 with over forty. I do not know the figures for the secondary schools. Certainly, the number will be reduced, but, as the hon. Gentleman knows, Essex is a county in which the school population is growing very rapidly and it is impossible for me to make a forecast of any value.

Sir L. Plummer: As the school population in Essex is increasing rapidly, will the right hon. Gentleman have a word with the new county council to see that it does not revert to the old practice of making children walk three miles to

school and back in the interests of economy?

Sir D. Eccles: I will certainly talk to the new council on a variety of topics.

Nursery Schools (Part-time Teachers)

Mrs. Butler: asked the Minister of Education what steps he is taking to staff additional nursery schools or classes on a part-time basis, where married women teachers are available for part-time teaching only.

Sir D. Eccles: While these teachers are urgently needed for teaching children of compulsory school age I regret they cannot be spared for staffing additional nursery schools or classes.

Mrs. Butler: In view of the undoubted need, which I do not think the right hon. Gentleman disputes, where a local education authority can establish that married women teachers are available for part-time teaching in nursery schools but will not in any circumstances teach in primary schools, will he permit the establishment of additional nursery schools?

Sir D. Eccles: I should welcome such information from a local education authority, but I have never had anything like it.

Mrs. White: Does not the right hon. Gentleman appreciate that by allowing certain nursery schools to be opened in suitable areas he may release other married women who would be available to teach in primary or secondary schools? This is a matter of balancing the advantages. In many areas it would be far better to allow some nursery classes or schools to be opened to release other married women.

Sir D. Eccles: It is not my policy to attract married women into schools by providing them with the means for leaving their small children if they do not want to.

Advanced Business Studies

Mr. Walker: asked the Minister of Education whether he will introduce legislation to provide for the establishment of advanced business schools.

Sir D. Eccles: Following the Report of the Advisory Committee on Further Education for Commerce, considerable development of advanced business studies is being undertaken at the colleges of commerce and in certain technical colleges. I am discussing further plans with the colleges and industry. No legislation will be required for these purposes.

Mr. Walker: I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for his reply. Is it not a fact that we are falling behind our industrial competitors in the provision of education for business management and administration?

Sir D. Eccles: I think that we have a considerable leeway to make up. We are now trying our best to do it, but we require more support from industry itself.

Village Schools

Mr. P. Browne: asked the Minister of Education if he is satisfied that the increasing rate at which village schools are being closed is in the best interests both of the children and the rural community as a whole; and if he will make a statement.

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Education (Mr. Kenneth Thompson): Proposals to close village schools require my right hon. Friend's approval, and objections can be taken. The facts of each case are very carefully considered before a decision is made. Approval is not given to any proposal against the interests of the children. My right hon. Friend believes that local education authorities have the same considerations in mind.

Mr. P. Browne: I agree that the interests of the children come first, but is my hon. Friend aware that it would appear that many local education authorities plan the concentration of children by the map without paying special attention to the human element in the interests of the children themselves? Is he further aware that many teachers say that, because of this concentration of schools, children having to travel long distances are much more difficult to teach when they get to the other end?

Mr. Thompson: Those are the considerations which my right hon. Friend

has to balance very carefully when he is reaching a decision on these proposals. I assure the House that they are taken very carefully into account.

Teachers (Married Women)

Mr. P. Browne: asked the Minister of Education what response he has had to his appeal to married women to return to the teaching profession; and if he will make a statement.

Sir D. Eccles: I have so far received reports from two out of three local education authorities which show that they have appointed 700 qualified married women between 1st February and 31st March. They are still considering applications from another 400 qualified married women who wish to return to teaching. This is an encouraging response particularly as many authorities have only just begun their own local publicity campaigns.

Mr. Chetwynd: Are the bulk of these full-time or part-time?

Sir D. Eccles: Of these, 380 are full-time, and 320 part-time.

Widdicombe House School, Stokenham (Handicapped Children)

Mr. Dodds: asked the Minister of Education what was the form of the investigation by his Department into the treatment of handicapped children at the Widdicombe House School, Stokenham; what did the investigation reveal; what action was taken to inform those concerned about the results; and what information he has on the effect on the school population, and particularly on the number of children now attending the school.

Mr. K. Thompson: Her Majesty's inspector and two of the Ministry's medical officers inspected Widdicombe House School and reported serious doubts as to the suitability of the school for pupils requiring special educational treatment. After the report and the proprietor's comments on it had been considered, all local education authorities were told that the school was unsuitable for the education of handicapped pupils for whom they are responsible and were asked to remove such children.
The school has re-started with privately-financed pupils. It will therefore


be my right hon. Friend's duty to watch its progress carefully in pursuance of his obligations under Part III of the Education Act.

Mr. Dodds: I thank the Parliamentary Secretary for his interest and for the statement he has made. Will he bear in mind that I am still receiving reports from local people in the district which refer to scandalous goings-on among children and the staff? Will he bear in mind that, whether the child is handicapped or is sent by the local authority, if the details are correct it is most unsuitable for any child to be in a school of this sort?

Mr. Thompson: I assure the House that my right hon. Friend's duty under Part III of the Act will be very seriously observed.

Awards to Students (Standing Advisory Committee)

Mr. Willey: asked the Minister of Education whether he will state the membership of his Standing Advisory Committee on questions arising from the system of awards from public funds.

Sir D. Eccles: The Committee is to be appointed jointly by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Scotland and myself. I am glad to say that Sir Francis Hill has accepted our invitation to be Chairman. The names of the remaining members will be announced as soon as possible.

Mr. Willey: I appreciate the right hon. Gentleman's statement and I look forward to the announcement of the names of the other members of the Committee. Is the right hon. Gentleman in a position to say when he is likely to introduce the Bill which has been promised?

Sir D. Eccles: I cannot say that at present.

Mrs. White: As the Committee will be particularly concerned with matters relating to students, will the right hon. Gentleman bear their interests in mind when forming the Committee?

Sir D. Eccles: That is the purpose of the Committee, but I am doubtful about representation by students, if that is what the hon. Lady means.

European Ministers of Education (Meeting)

Mr. Willey: asked the Minister of Education whether he will make a statement on the meeting of European Ministers of Education at Hamburg.

Sir D. Eccles: This was the first meeting at which all member countries of the Council of Europe were represented. There was a useful exchange of views on such subjects as the teaching of modern languages, the education of young people after they have left school, and the possibility of making greater use of television in adult education.
A paper making recommendations on future work was presented jointly by the Austrian Minister of Education and my hon. Friend, the Parliamentary Secretary.
The next meeting of the Ministers will be held in Rome on the invitation of the Italian Government.

Mr. Willey: I fully appreciate the work which has been done. Is the right hon. Gentleman aware there is a feeling that the work being done within the Council of Europe group is lagging far behind the work being done within the Six? In view of this, will he do his best to provide an initiative, a dynamic, for this very useful collaboration?

Sir D. Eccles: I will. The work done depends to a certain extent on finance, and it is not very easy to get finance for this purpose.

Oral Answers to Questions — HONG KONG

Women Medical Officers

Mrs. Castle: asked the Secretary of State for the Colonies (1) how many women medical officers are employed by the Hong Kong Government; how many of them are receiving equal pay; and what are the grounds on which some women medical officers receive equal pay and others do not;

(2) why the Government of Hong Kong has not carried out the recommendations of the Salaries Commission with regard to the remuneration of women medical officers in the Government service.

The Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies (Mr. Hugh Fraser): Women medical officers with the requisite


experience and serving on the pensionable establishment or on agreement, who can be regarded as making their careers in Government service, receive equal pay. At present, fifteen officers out of seventy-two employed by the Hong Kong Government so qualify.
This is as far as the Governor considers it possible to go in giving effect to the recommendations in the Salaries Commission's Report.

Mrs. Castle: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that both he and his right hon. Friend have been misled by the Governor of Hong Kong on this matter; that in fact what the Governor is doing is refusing to implement the recommendations of the Salaries Commission, which said that married status should not be taken into account in assessing rates of pay; that these women medical officers are being treated differently, depending on whether they are single or married; that married women are not allowed by the Government of Hong Kong to have permanent employment in Government service, and that therefore it is only single women who have served a probationary period of four years who are getting equal pay, although the Salaries Commission insisted that they should all have—[HON. MEMBERS: "Speech."] I am sorry, but I put down two Questions—

Mr. Speaker: However many Questions an hon. Member may put down, it is desirable that supplementary questions should not be long.

Mrs. Castle: I was just coming to the end, but it is difficult when one is raising a complicated matter and when two separate issues are answered together. Are the right hon. Gentleman and his hon. Friend aware that they have been misled by the Governor of Hong Kong, who is not carrying out the recommendations of the Salaries Commission, and will they therefore look at this matter again to see that women medical officers get equal pay?

Mr. Fraser: No, Sir. [HON. MEMBERS: "Oh."] We cannot look at this matter again because it is evident, in the light of what the hon. Lady has said, that we have not been misled. The Governor is doing what he can to implement the Report and it is a perfectly

well established custom in Hong Kong that people who are married cannot be regarded as career officers. [HON. MEMBERS: "Why not?"] There was a considerable increase in pay in 1959.

Mrs. White: Surely the hon. Gentleman is aware that Hong Kong is notorious for its discrimination against professional women—[Laughter.]—perhaps I should say women in certain professions. Will not the hon. Gentleman see that at least the Government set a good example in the matter?

Mr. Fraser: I thank the hon. Lady. The pay for those of professional status will be re-examined in the current year.

Mrs. Castle: On a point of order. In view of the totally unsatisfactory nature of that reply, I beg to give notice that I shall raise the matter on the Adjournment.

Oral Answers to Questions — KENYA

Europeans (Emigration and Immigration)

Mr. F. Harris: asked the Secretary of State for the Colonies if he will give information, up to the latest possible date, of the average monthly number of Europeans who are leaving Kenya permanently and the corresponding number of new and permanent European immigrants into Kenya.

The Secretary of State for the Colonies (Mr. Iain Macleod): The latest figures I have available are for 1960, when permanent European emigration totalled 1,802 and permanent European immigration 1,733. Monthly emigration only once exceeded 200 persons, and twice fell short of 100; immigration was between 100 and 200 in all save one month.

Mr. Harris: I am rather surprised by that reply, but it was a very pleasant reply. As 85 per cent. of the economy of Kenya is dependent on the efforts of the Europeans in Kenya and upon those efforts depend the maximum employment of people of all races and their standard of living, what has my right hon. Friend in mind not only to encourage those people to remain in Kenya and to continue to make their homes there, but to send to Kenya further people to assist in the great work which has to be done there?

Mr. Macleod: I, too, am very glad to see that the figures are steadier than some reports may have led us to believe. I entirely agree about the enormous importance of European agriculture, which is the backbone of the whole economy of Kenya. I am sure that the progress which we have been making in the last day or so in forming a stable Government for Kenya is an essential part of the process of seeing that people of all races have a future there.

Mr. Callaghan: Will the Colonial Secretary give every encouragement to young men and women who are willing to go to Kenya and to serve side by side with Africans on terms of equality to do so? May I ask him not to listen to a great deal of the propaganda which is going on and which gives the impression that there is no future for that great country?

Mr. Macleod: Kenya is a great country and I am certain that it has a great future. Whatever matters we may disagree on, everyone wants to see people of all races make a home there in future.

Mr. Per Wästberg

Mr. Stonehouse: asked the Secretary of State for the Colonies why Mr. Per Wästberg, a Swedish journalist, has been declared a prohibited immigrant in Kenya.

Mr. H. Fraser: Mr. Per Wästberg has not been declared a prohibited immigrant in Kenya. He and his wife were informed on 10th April, on their return to Kenya from a visit to other territories, that no further extension of their visitors' passes could be made. These had been granted on 17th February, valid for one month, and subsequently extended for a further three weeks. Mr. and Mrs. Wästberg were, however, given passes to legalise their stay in Kenya until 13th April when they could conveniently depart on the next stage of their tour.

Mr. Stonehouse: Does the Under-Secretary realise that his Answer means the same thing as my Question? Mr. and Mrs. Wästberg were asked to leave. Why was that stupid action taken against a distinguished Swedish journalist and author? Is the hon. Gentleman aware that that sort of action can undo the

good will established for Britain in Sweden by the work of the Colonial Secretary in Tanganyika, for instance? Will not the hon. Gentleman have another look at this matter?

Mr. Fraser: No, Sir. This is a question for the Governor, and, as I have explained, these people were not declared to be prohibited immigrants.

Mr. G. M. Thomson: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that that is an unsatisfactory answer? Is he aware that when these Swedish citizens arrived in Kenya in February, there was no question of any limit on their time of stay? Is he aware that the territories which he mentioned and which they visited were the Central African Federation Territories? Will he give the House an assurance that no pressure was brought to bear in this case by the Central African Federation Government which made the Governor change his mind?

Mr. Fraser: I can give that assurance.

Political Situation

Mr. Brockway: asked the Secretary of State for the Colonies if he will make a statement on the political situation in Kenya.

Mr. Macleod: The Kenya African Democratic Union has recently agreed to take part in the formation of a Government, and discussions are now proceeding with a view to recommendations being made to Her Majesty The Queen for the appointment of Ministers. The Governor will announce a date for the formal opening of the Legislative Council as soon as possible.

Mr. Brockway: While recognising the need for a stable Government in Kenya, does the right hon. Gentleman appreciate that the arrangements which have been made with K.A.D.U. are not likely to be stable and may be very temporary and that there is no likelihood of a stable Government in Kenya until Jomo Kenyatta is released?

Mr. Macleod: I am bound to say that I do not accept the first or second part of that supplementary question. I believe that the Government which is being formed will prove to be strong and stable.

Sir H. Oakshott: Has my right hon. Friend's attention been drawn to reports coming through in the last hour or two which seem to indicate that a Government is almost on the verge of being formed, and can he give the House any details? Is the report true? If so, is it not a very welcome step forward?

Mr. Macleod: Yes, I can confirm those reports. In the last hour or two, I have received from the Governor a list of six names for the more important portfolios—three African, two European and one Asian. Those appointments will be confirmed at once and I imagine that the Governor will be making an early announcement on them.

Oral Answers to Questions — NORTHERN RHODESIA

United National Independence Party, Northern Province

Mr. Callaghan: asked the Secretary of State for the Colonies if, in view of recent incidents in the Northern Province of Northern Rhodesia, he will review the administrative arrangements in the territory and ensure that the United National Independence Party is permitted to function freely during the forthcoming election period.

Mr. Swingler: asked the Secretary of State for the Colonies if his attention has been drawn to the imprisonment, punishment, and ill-treatment of supporters of the United National Independence Party of Northern Rhodesia in the Northern Province; what action he has taken to investigate these matters; and if he will take steps to ensure freedom of speech and association in the territory.

Mr. Iain Macleod: I am confident that no restriction will be placed on the lawful activity of any political party. The Governor has found no evidence to support the statement that supporters of the United National Independence Party have been maltreated. Where members of U.N.I.P. have been imprisoned this has followed breaches of the law, all of which have been brought to trial before the courts in the normal manner.
Freedom of speech and association within the law are ensured to all inhabitants of the territory.

Mr. Callaghan: Is the Colonial Secretary aware that his confidence is, unfortunately, misplaced and that the facts do not bear out his confidence? Is it not significant that the only complaints which are coming, some of which I have had an opportunity of investigating, pretty well at first hand, are coming from this province? If the right hon. Gentleman will not review the arrangements himself, will he ask the Governor to keep a careful oversight over the behaviour of some members of the administration in this part of the Territory?

Mr. Macleod: I have drawn the Governor's attention, in correspondence with him, to a number of allegations. That does not mean that I accept them in any way, but it is my duty to draw his attention to them. I should have thought that the hon. Member's suggestions were repudiated by the fact that in the last six months alone, I am told, no fewer than 125 branches of U.N.T.P. have been formed in the Northern Province.

Mr. Swingler: Will the Colonial Secretary say what form of inquiries into the allegations have been made? Did he see a few days ago a report of a speech made by Mr. Kenneth Kaunda, leader of the United Independence Party, giving chapter and verse about the treatment of some African citizens with whom he had stayed in the Northern Province? Have those allegations been examined and, if so, who has done the investigating?

Mr. Macleod: They have not been examined, but they are being examined because, apart from making a speech at a Press conference in London, Mr. Kaunda came to see me and discussed some of these matters with me. I have drawn this to the attention of the authorities in Northern Rhodesia, as I have said.

Mr. Biggs-Davison: Will my right hon. Friend do his utmost to see that all lawful parties in Northern Rhodesia are able to function free of the sort of intimidation which has sometimes disgraced sections of the United National Independence Party during an election period?

Mr. Macleod: I am certain that it is essential that all parties, African and European and every other party, should function within the law and free from intimidation.

Oral Answers to Questions — GAMBIA

Disturbances

Mr. Callaghan: asked the Secretary of State for the Colonies if he will hold an inquiry into the disturbances in the Gambia in January last which resulted in two deaths and forty injured.

Mr. Iain Macleod: No, Sir. There were no deaths. Three people were admitted to hospital and have since been discharged.

Mr. Callaghan: I am usually right in these cases, especially when the Monckton Commission went to Africa—and the Devlin Commission.

Sir W. Bromley-Davenport: Go on—ask the Question.

Mr. Callaghan: On a point of order. Will you restrain the hon. Baronet the Member for Knutsford (Sir W. Bromley-Davenport) from usurping your functions, Mr. Speaker?

Mr. Speaker: I should like the House to get on with Questions.

Mr. Callaghan: Is the Colonial Secretary aware that I was told by the secretary of the General Workers' Union in Gambia in this House last week that the figures I have quoted represented the true situation? Can the right hon. Gentleman account for the apparent discrepancy?

Mr. Macleod: Obviously, neither the hon. Gentleman nor I has first-hand information. I naturally rely for my information on these matters on the Governor and I am sure that his information is right. After all, he has access to the records of the hospital which treated some people for minor bruises and others who were detained. With respect to the hon. Member, I therefore assume that the balance of evidence is probably on my side.

Oral Answers to Questions — COLONIAL TERRITORIES

Colonial Development Corporation

Mr. G. M. Thomson: asked the Secretary of State for the Colonies if he is now in a position to make a statement on the future arrangements for the Colonial Development Corporation.

Mr. Iain Macleod: As the Answer is rather long and detailed, I will, with permission, make a statement at the end of Questions.

Oral Answers to Questions — TRADE AND COMMERCE

Imports from Hong Kong (Marking)

Mr. Frank Allaun: asked the President of the Board of Trade if he will require that imports from Hong Kong are marked as made in Hong Kong.

The President of the Board of Trade (Mr. Reginald Maudling): No, Sir. The Merchandise Marks Acts, 1887–1953 prescribe the conditions in which imported goods should bear an indication of origin; I do not think that any change in this respect is needed.

Mr. Allaun: Is not the description "Empire Made" misleading in this case, and would not "Made in Hong Kong" be preferable in view of the appallingly low wages and other sweated conditions there with which our British workers have to compete?

Mr. Maudling: The descriptions permitted are either "Foreign" or "Empire", and it would not be right to single out one territory for a special limitation.

Roumanian and Polish Eggs

Sir A. Hurd: asked the President of the Board of Trade if he will state the outcome of the urgent examination given to the application for an anti-dumping duty on Roumanian and Polish eggs.

Mr. de Freitas: asked the President of the Board of Trade what action he has taken on the anti-dumping application by the National Farmers' Union and the British Egg Marketing Board in respect of eggs from Poland and Roumania.

Mr. Biggs-Davison: asked the President of the Board of Trade what action he has now taken in response to the producers' organisations' application for an anti-dumping duty on Roumanian and Polish eggs.

Mr. Maudling: The Poles are traditional suppliers of eggs to the


British market. This year their supplies were earlier and heavier than usual. I am satisfied that last month they sold at a price that involved a margin of dumping, and had their sales continued at that rate they could, in my opinion, have caused material damage within the meaning of the Act. I have talked to the Polish authorities. They tell me that shipments are on the decline. At the peak they were about 60,000 boxes in a week. They intend that their sales on the shell egg market next week will not be more than 18,000 boxes and not more than 11,000 boxes a week thereafter. Planned shipments in any quantity will not extend beyond late May or early June.
Sales of Roumanian eggs have been on a much smaller scale and the Roumanian authorities informed me that future arrivals are negligible.
In these circumstances I do not consider that I should be justified in imposing an anti-dumping duty.

Sir A. Hurd: I thank my right hon. Friend for his Answer, so far as it goes. Will he recall that when we sought to unload some surplus eggs on Germany a year or two ago, we were very quickly called to order, and will he be all the more prompt in the Board of Trade about calling to order the Poles, Roumanians, or anybody else who seeks to dump eggs here to the detriment of the British producer and also the British taxpayer?

Mr. Maudling: We received the application only on Wednesday of last week and I think that we have acted fairly promptly.

Mr. de Freitas: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that the view that he acted promptly is not shared by the farming communities and that there is a feeling that whereas the Board of Trade may act very quickly when it comes to dumping industrial products, it is not so quick in its action about agricultural products?

Mr. Maudling: That is the opposite of the truth. We act particularly quickly in the case of perishable products, and this is a very good example.

Mr. Turton: Did my right hon. Friend say that he found there was evidence of dumping in the Polish case but because he thought it was not going to

continue for very long he refused the application for a duty? Is not that an abuse of the whole system?

Mr. Maudling: My point was that there was a margin of dumping, but I have also to be satisfied that there is substantial damage—"material injury" is the phrase—and as these cases concern only a very small proportion of the British market I am satisfied that there was no great damage within the meaning of the Act.

Mr. Fernyhough: Can the right hon. Gentleman say what percentage these imports represent of total home consumption?

Mr. Maudling: At their largest they were 10 per cent. of the sales of the Egg Marketing Board and are now reduced to about 2 per cent.

Mr. Biggs-Davison: My right hon. Friend said that the application was received only on Wednesday? Was not the state of dumping widely known in the country long before that? Is the Board of Trade in close contact with the Ministry of Agriculture to see that prompt action can be taken in these cases?

Mr. Maudling: Yes, Sir. I said that the formal application was received last Wednesday but the first informal approach by the N.F.U. and Marketing Board took place only two days before that.

Industrial Development Certificates, Faversham

Mr. P. Wells: asked the President of the Board of Trade how many applications for industrial development certificates have been received from industrialists desiring to build factories in the Borough of Faversham during the period January, 1956 to January, 1961; and what decisions were taken.

Mr. Maudling: One application was received to build a new factory, and ten applications to extend existing factories. All were approved.

Mr. Wells: While thanking the Minister for that Answer, may I ask if he will note that there is great difficulty in Faversham in finding jobs for school leavers at present and that a large number of workers have to commute long


distances each day? Will he take these facts into consideration when considering further applications for I.D.C.s?

Mr. Maudling: I think the record of applications to which the Answer refers shows that we are well aware of the problems in this district.

Major Yuri Gagarin

Mr. Pentland: asked the President of the Board of Trade whether, on the occasion of his visit to the British Trade Fair in Moscow next month, he will extend an official invitation to Major Yuri Gagarin to visit Great Britain.

Mr. Maudling: I understand that those responsible for organising the Soviet Industrial Fair in London are considering inviting Major Gagarin to visit it.

Mr. Pentland: Would not the right hon. Gentleman agree that an official invitation by him when he is in Moscow would not only reinforce the recognition this country has of the superb courage displayed by this man, but also give our top scientists and technologists an early opportunity of having discussions with him That is very important because, does not the right hon. Gentleman agree that, some day, whether we like it or not, a Britisher will have to travel this road opened by Major Gagarin?

Mr. Maudling: I understand that an invitation is being offered. I do not think we should butt in, but certainly everybody will be delighted if such an invitation is extended and accepted.

Mr. Emrys Hughes: In view of the Home Secretary's recent refusal to allow certain people to come into this country, will the President of the Board of Trade give an assurance that the Home Secretary will not ban Major Gagarin as a prohibited immigrant?

Oral Answers to Questions — THE PRIME MINISTER AND PRESIDENT KENNEDY (TALKS)

Mr. Frank Allaun: asked the Prime Minister if he will make a statement about his conversations with President Kennedy relating to Polaris missiles, and particularly their test failures.

The Prime Minister (Mr. Harold Macmillan): I would refer the hon.

Member to the Answers which I gave to the hon. Member for Pembroke (Mr. Donnelly) on 25th April. I made it clear then that I did not think it would be proper for me in answering Questions to go beyond the points contained in or arising out of the joint communiqué issued by President Kennedy and myself after our meeting. I see no reason to depart from that in this particular case.

Mr. Allaun: Did the President mention that of the eighteen underwater tests of the Polaris missile, eight have been failures according to United States Navy spokesmen? Does not that mean that our country is being made even more vulnerable by the use of an unreliable weapon?

The Prime Minister: If I were to answer that question either in the positive or the negative, I should be departing from the principle I set myself in the original Answer.

Oral Answers to Questions — CORPORAL PUNISHMENT

Mr. Hale: asked the Prime Minister whether the statement on corporal punishment made by the Secretary of State for the Home Department on 19th April, 1961, to the Conservative Women's National Advisory Committee represents the policy of Her Majesty's Government.

The Prime Minister: My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Home Department explained the objections to judicial corporal punishment. What he said certainly represents the policy of Her Majesty's Government.

Mr. Hale: The Home Secretary also said other things. Is the Prime Minister aware that while his right hon. Friend, with his customary vagueness, did not say which end of the belt was to be used on which end of the child or even which end it was intended to reform, this was recommending an offence against Section 1 of the Children and Young Persons Act, 1933, for which people have been sent to prison? While we appreciate that there is a difference of opinion among people of decent feeling on these questions of corporal punishment and on the value of the leather belt, indeed on tea, veal and ham


pie, provincial newspapers or even commercial television, the right hon. Gentleman might find some lessons on the pernicious effects of the whip on the basis of "si monumentum requiris, circumspice".

The Prime Minister: I must congratulate the hon. Member on a supplementary question admirably delivered and very comprehensive in its character. I am fortunate in that, although I have held many offices, I have never been Home Secretary or Minister of Education. Therefore, my experience has been entirely on the receiving end of this matter.

Mr. Emrys Hughes: Look at the result.

The Prime Minister: Judged by certain aspects, that might be said to be not altogether unsuccessful. I think it was quite clear what the Home Secretary was saying. He was saying that while there was a strong feeling in favour of disciplinary measures applied either in school or by the parent immediately after the offence without all the paraphernalia of the whole formality of police court proceedings and long delay, he did not approve—and the Government support him here—of the return of corporal punishment as part of the judicial system as opposed to the ordinary methods of discipline.

Mr. S. Silverman: Is the Prime Minister aware that what the Home Secretary was saying on this occasion went far beyond the policy which he rejected when the hon. Member for Ayr (Sir T. Moore) pressed it upon him, in that even the hon. Member for Ayr has never asked for corporal punishment for peccadilloes, but only for crimes of violence? Will the Prime Minister explain the inconsistency?

The Prime Minister: I do not think there was any inconsistency in what my right hon. Friend said. I think that his position is clearly understood and that it commands general support in this House and in the country.

Oral Answers to Questions — KENYA

Mr. Grimond: asked the Prime Minister if he will visit Kenya in the near future.

The Prime Minister: I have no plans at present to visit Kenya, much as I

should like to do so when opportunity occurs.

Mr. Grimond: Would not the formation of a new Government in Kenya offer such an opportunity? Is the Prime Minister aware that many of us have been receiving reports of white settlers in Kenya who are deeply perturbed because they feel they have been misled by Government statements in the past? Would it not be a good idea if he went and talked to them at first-hand and tried to allay their suspicions?

The Prime Minister: I have every confidence in the ability and experience of the Colonial Secretary.

Oral Answers to Questions — ADMINISTRATIVE TRIBUNALS AND ENQUIRIES

Mr. MacColl: asked the Prime Minister whether he will take steps to ensure that Ministers implement the recommendation of the Committee on Administrative Tribunals and Enquiries to the effect that they should submit to the parties at an inquiry for their observations any factual evidence, including expert evidence, obtained after the inquiry and influencing their final decision.

The Prime Minister: The Government agree that the parties to an inquiry should be given an opportunity of commenting on any new factual evidence obtained after the inquiry and this was made clear in the circular issued by the Ministry of Housing and Local Government in February, 1958. But the Government have always taken the view that the term "factual evidence" does not cover technical or other advice given to a Minister by officials on the issues raised at the inquiry and on the weight to be attached to the evidence which was given there.

Mr. MacColl: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that what the Government agreed was an interpretation of the words "factual evidence", which no one else accepts including the Council on Tribunals, and that that interpretation has apparently led to a headlong collision between that Council and the Lord Chancellor? Would the right hon. Gentleman direct his attention also to the case of the Saffron Walden inquiry, where the only issues were on questions of fact about whether chalk would do


damage to crops and livestock and whether there was a demand for chalk production, and on both these matters, on which the views of the inspector were rejected by the Minister, there must have been some other factual evidence on which the right hon. Gentleman could have based a decision?

The Prime Minister: I think that in the debate it was made clear that the Government broadly accept the recommendations and in the circular I think it was also made clear. I quite admit that there is a rather difficult margin between the duty of a Minister to try to evaluate the evidence and production of new evidence. I have had the misfortune for three years to try to handle these kinds of cases. There are enormous volumes of evidence and very difficult decisions. They are broadly not juridical decisions, but the best basis we can give to the balance of public advantage. Since the Minister cannot be himself an expert, I think he is entitled when taking new evidence—that has always been clear—to rely on the advice of officials as to the weight which should be given to all kinds of evidence.

Mr. Mitchison: Is the Prime Minister aware that the Council, which after all is a quasi-judicial body, held a long meeting about this and arrived at the conclusion that there had been a departure from the recommendations of the Franks Committee's Report? In those circumstances, is not the right thing to do in the general public interest to let the matter go before the Council on Tribunals and be properly and fully examined and reported on by that Council? I suggest that it is part of the Council's general duty.

The Prime Minister: I have seen the statement issued by the Council on Tribunals in reply to a statement made by the Lord Chancellor and I understand that the Lord Chancellor has himself replied. No doubt the matter will be further discussed between them—that is on this particular case. On the general principle, I think that this is right. Any new factual evidence, of course, should be, and it was understood would be, put back for comment, but I say that in trying to reach these very difficult decisions, which are rather a balance of advantage than of fact, it is right that the Minister should have the assistance

of his technical officials in evaluating the weight to be given to this or that argument.

Mr. Gaitskell: Is the Prime Minister aware that there is a great deal of dissatisfaction, both about the decision taken by the Minister in this case, and also about the refusal to discuss with other parties to the case the new evidence—we would say factual evidence—presented to him and on the basis of which he appears to have taken this decision? Will the Prime Minister look at this matter again and consider the suggestion of my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kettering (Mr. Mitchison) that the Council on Tribunals should be invited to look into the whole matter so that we can have a full report? Is he aware that the Lord Chancellor's statement has not by any means allayed public anxiety on the matter?

The Prime Minister: I can understand that, of course, but as all these tribunals were set up by the Government in the hope of getting a more acceptable system, I think that the right hon. Gentleman will agree that it would be better to await the outcome of the discussions now going on between the Chairman of the Council and the Lord Chancellor and to see whether out of that some new formulation is necessary or not.

Mr. Wade: As the case has raised some very important questions of principle, will the Prime Minister discuss with the Leader of the House the possibility of having a debate some time in the future?

The Prime Minister: That is a matter to be discussed through the usual channels. I should point out that this whole system is a great amelioration in the benefit to the ordinary citizen on the old procedure. I must also point out—and I have some experience of this—that there is always the great battle between those who say that our procedures in these matters are intolerably slow, holding up all kinds of necessary public work, and those who say that they are too rapid. One has to make the best balance one can, but I think that after the discussion between the Lord Chancellor and the Chairman of the Council it ought to be possible to look at the matter again.

Mr. Mitchison: If this is a great amelioration it ought to be assisted to work. If the Council on Tribunals is given this general duty to supervise this branch of the law lying between administration on the one hand and judicial proceeding on the other, it ought to be helped in doing it. In a case of this sort where the Tribunal thinks that there has been a breach of the recommendations of the Franks Report, surely it ought to be given the opportunity of examining and reporting on it and the matter ought not to be left to some secret solution between the Lord Chancellor and the Chairman?

The Prime Minister: I did not understand that the consultations between the Lord Chancellor and the Chairman of the Council were secret. I understood that all the correspondence had been published.

Mr. Lipton: Will the Prime Minister be good enough to explain this: when I sought to put a Question to the Attorney-General impugning the action of the Lord Chancellor in this matter, the Question was transferred to the Minister of Housing and Local Government, one of the people involved. Since when has it been the doctrine that the Minister of Housing is responsible for jurisdiction exercised by the Lord Chancellor in a matter of this kind when his own conduct as Minister is also impugned?

The Prime Minister: I find that question somewhat obscure. It passes my comprehension.

Mr. Gaitskell: Will the Prime Minister undertake to make a further statement on this matter after the discussions, to which he has referred, between the Council and the Lord Chancellor have taken place? Is he aware that we reserve the right to take steps to arrange, in the time available to us, for a debate of this matter, because we are by no means satisfied with what has been said so far?

The Prime Minister: The right hon. Gentleman asks whether I will make a statement. I will answer any Questions put down to me. The second part of the question, about a debate, is a separate request.

QUESTIONS TO MINISTERS

Mr. Shinwell: On a point of order. May I ask for your guidance, Mr. Speaker? Would you be good enough to inform the House, myself included, by what test you determine the importance of a Question which enables hon. Members to put a whole series of supplementary questions and prevents other hon. Members from putting their Questions?

Mr. Speaker: It is extremely difficult. I try to exercise my judgment and I find it shown apparently to be wrong by a large number of hon. Members desiring to ask supplementary questions about one topic. I regret that the House did not get further with Questions today and I accept my part of the blame. I cannot give the right hon. Gentleman or the House a better answer than that I try to exercise my judgment as best may be in the interests of the House.

Mr. S. Silverman: Further to that point of order. May I draw your attention to the fact that nearly seven minutes have been devoted to this Question so far and that in the course of those seven minutes we have had supplementary questions from three occupants of the Opposition Front Bench as well as supplementary questions from a variety of other people? With the greatest of respect, it looks to some of us as though this is nothing but an organised attempt to prevent other hon. Members from asking Questions.

Mr. Callaghan: Rubbish.

Mr. Speaker: If I thought that the hon. Member for Nelson and Colne (Mr. S. Silverman) included the Chair in the organisation, I should have to rule his observations out of order. May I ask Mr. Macleod to answer Question No. 25.

Mr. Silverman: Further to that point of order. Is it not the case that the old tradition of the House, though there was never a rule about it, was that Members on the Front Bench did not compete with one another for supplementary questions on the same Question? It has mostly been regarded as sufficient for the hon. Member who is charged with the responsibility for a Department or set of circumstances to ask the supplementary


questions. He may conceivably be supported by the Leader of the Opposition. But to have a competition among Members on the Front Bench, competing with one another for supplementary questions on a not very important matter, is against all the traditions of the House.

Mr. Speaker: I do not think that I have sufficient experience in the way in which these matters are organised by the Opposition to make this into a question of Order for the Chair. I ask Mr. Macleod to answer Question No. 25.

COLONIAL DEVELOPMENT CORPORATION

The Secretary of State for the Colonies (Mr. Iain Macleod): With permission, Sir, I will now answer Question No. 25.
I am now able to announce the changes which the Government have decided to introduce affecting the financial liabilities of the Colonial Development Corporation to the Exchequer. In framing these arrangements my right hon. and learned Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer and I have been greatly helped by the analysis and recommendations in the Report of the Committee under the chairmanship of Lord Sinclair of Cleeve, Cmnd. 786.
Our proposals are as follows. In the past, the true financial position of the Corporation has been greatly obscured by the arrangements whereby, in recognition of the fact that some of the Corporation's projects do not immediately become revenue-bearing, it does not have to service long-term Exchequer advances during the first seven years after they are made. The accumulation of unpaid interest which has thus arisen amounts to about £11 million.
In order to ease the financial position of the Corporation, it has been decided to release it from the obligation to meet this liability when it becomes due, and to place the sum into a special account, in a way similar to that proposed by the Sinclair Committee, where interest will not be payable. We shall also place in this account the Corporation's debt—about £9 million—arising from the Exchequer advances for projects which

have been wholly abandoned by the Corporation.
Towards payment of both liabilities in the special account—up to a total of £20 million in all—the Corporation will pay over to the Exchequer 60 per cent. of its net annual profits in excess of £250,000. These profit-sharing arrangements are designed to relate the Corporation's payments more closely to its financial capacities from time to time. These are, however, novel arrangements, and we propose to review them in three years' time in the light of experience gained.
The terms attaching to future advances by the Exchequer will depend on whether the Corporation requires them for making loans to third parties or for investment in equity-type holdings. In the case of loan transactions, the period over which repayments to the Exchequer will be made will be such as to conform generally to that of the capital repayments which the Corporation will be receiving from third parties. In the case of investments in shares, the Corporation will generally draw long-term advances for a 40-year period, and, for this type of investment only, the seven-year grace period will continue to be applicable.
I am satisfied that these arrangements will be of real assistance to the Corporation in the important and difficult task in which it is engaged. The Corporation, for its part, would have preferred the adoption of the Sinclair Committee's recommendations, whereby a part of the Exchequer advances would have been converted into equity capital. All the same, it considers that these changes will provide a sounder, stronger and more realistic basis for its future operations. To this result, the Corporation has made its contribution by accepting a restriction of the type of project to which the seven-year grace period will now apply. I should also like to acknowledge the help and co-operation it has given me over a prolonged period of consultation.

Mr. G. M. Thomson: While thanking the Secretary of State for making that statement, and while welcoming the proposals to relieve the Colonial Development Corporation of the unfair burden of interest which it has been carrying from past projects, may I ask him


whether he is aware that he has failed to use the very long time which he has had to consider this matter to produce proposals for the future of the Colonial Development Corporation on a sufficiently imaginative scale?
Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that, in particular, there is regret on three points: first, that he has failed to agree that enterprises of risk which are important in under-developed territories should be treated as equity investment; secondly, that he has made no announcement about expanding the amount of capital available to the C.D.C., since its capital is running out; and, thirdly, and most important, that he has not chosen this opportunity to announce that the C.D.C. will be able to go on initiating new projects in newly independent territories?

Mr. Macleod: As hon. Members will see when they have time to study my statement, in many matters we have followed the Sinclair Report. The main Sinclair recommendation which we have not been able to follow—converting part of the advances to an equity shareholding in the C.D.C.—would, in our view, have amounted to a subsidy over which there would not have been full Government or Parliamentary control. We therefore believe that our answer is the better answer.
I was asked about the amount of money available. As we explained in a debate on this matter, I very much hope that it will be possible to make this fund, in part at least, a revolving fund.
I know that hon. Members attach great importance to the third question which the hon. Member put. I believe that the Government's attitude in this respect is right. In time, it will, inevitably, have to be reviewed, but the needs of the Colonial Territories are such at this time that I believe it right that the efforts of C.D.C.—which, after all, was set up specifically for this purpose—should be devoted to and particularly pointed at those needs.

Mr. Thomson: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that today is the day on which Sierra Leone is celebrating its independence? Is not this the kind of territory in which the C.D.C. should have the opportunity to carry out new projects in the future, as one of our

methods of giving help to that kind of new Commonwealth country?

Mr. Macleod: Today is Sierra Leone's independence day and we send her all possible best wishes. We have always taken the view that when countries become independent the best way of giving them aid is either through technical aid in one form or another, or through Commonwealth assistance loans or on a Government basis. While the C.D.C. can bring to fruition projects which it may have in newly independent countries, it should put its main effort into starting new projects in the Colonies, where there is very great need.

Mr. Grimond: Do I understand from the right hon. Gentleman's statement that the C.D.C. will have to pay over a higher proportion of its profits than used to be the case? I think that it is to be 60 per cent. in excess of £250,000. Is it likely to hamper the amount of capital which it can accumulate for new projects?

Mr. Macleod: No, I do not think that this will hamper the C.D.C. This is a matter on which we have managed to reach agreement with the Treasury and the C.D.C. This is towards the repayment of the funds, which may total £20 million. Towards that the C.D.C. will pay over 60 per cent. of the net annual profit, but only in excess of £250,000.

Sir G. Nicholson: Will not this require legislation? If it does—indeed, in any case—will not my right hon. Friend take the opportunity to review the whole position of the newly independent territories? When he says that most of the C.D.C. work will go to the Colonies, he will no doubt bear in mind that the Colonial Empire is undergoing metamorphosis and that many of its members are coming out of the jurisdiction of the Colonial Office. Is he satisfied in his heart of hearts that there is no gap or hiatus when a territory becomes independent?

Mr. Macleod: I am never satisfied that the arrangements are perfect. I would repeat a point made by my hon. Friend the Financial Secretary to the Treasury on the Department of Technical Cooperation Bill, two days ago: even after the independence of Sierra Leone today there are still more than 30 Colonial Territories. I am sure that it is right


that the C.D.C.'s effort should be directed first to them. I admit that in view of the shrinking in the number of Colonial Territories these arrangements, which may be, and I believe are, the right arrangements for the present, will have to be reviewed in the future. I think it likely that what I have said today may mean a comparatively small legislative amendment, but I am not yet advised whether that is so.

Mrs. White: On what basis is the Corporation expected to finance pilot and experimental schemes, which are particularly welcome?

Mr. Macleod: In general, these matters are left to the Corporation's commercial judgment and its arrangements will follow the lines which were outlined in a speech which I made to the House when we debated this matter a short time ago.

Several Hon. Members: Several Hon. Members rose—

Mr. Speaker: Order. We must get on with business.

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE

Mr. Gaitskell: May I ask the Leader of the House whether he will state the business of the House for next week?

The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. R. A. Butler): Yes, Sir. The business for next week will be as follows:
MONDAY, 1ST MAY—Second Reading of the North Atlantic Shipping Bill and Committee Stage of the necessary Money Resolution.
Committee and remaining stages of the Republic of South Africa (Temporary Provisions) Bill.
TUESDAY, 2ND MAY—Committee and remaining stages of the Army and Air Force Bill.
Report and Third Reading of the Local Authorities (Expenditure on Special Purposes) (Scotland) Bill.
Consideration of the Motions relating to the Fatstock (Guarantee Payments); and the Livestock Rearing Land Improvement Grants Orders.
WEDNESDAY, 3RD MAY—Report and Third Reading of the Rating and Valuation Bill.
THURSDAY, 4TH MAY—Second Reading of the Finance Bill.
FRIDAY, 5TH MAY—Consideration of Private Members' Bills.
MONDAY, 8TH MAY—The proposed business will be: Supply [13th Allotted Day]: Committee.
A debate will take place on Apprenticeship and Training for Industry.

Mr. Gaitskell: First, can the Leader of the House confirm that in Monday's debate it will be in order to discuss the general position of the shipping and shipbuilding industries? Secondly, will he arrange for a debate on foreign affairs before the Whitsun Recess—possibly a two-day debate?

Mr. Butler: The first matter referred to by the right hon. Gentleman is more a matter for the Chair than for me, although I would hope that references to the shipping and shipbuilding industries would be in order.
It is our intention, by agreement through the usual channels and on representations from various quarters of the House, to have a debate on foreign affairs before the Whitsun Recess.

Sir G. Nicholson: If my right hon. Friend is contemplating giving the House an opportunity of sending a message to the President of the French Republic, expressing its delight at the better state of affairs in France, will he also urge on the President that, in the British view, mercy is an act of strength, not of weakness?

Mr. Butler: My hon. Friend the Under-Secretary expressed on Monday the general support that Her Majesty's Government give to the stability of the régime in France, and of our friendship for the French people. I do not think that I should enlarge on it today, but I have no doubt that my hon. Friend's observations will be noted.

Mr. Rankin: The Leader of the House has just said that references to shipbuilding will be permissible in the Second Reading debate on the North Atlantic Shipping Bill. How wide will the references be, and how far can they


go; and can the right hon. Gentleman assure us that this concession will not interfere with the prospect of a debate on the shipbuilding industry?

Mr. Butler: I said last week that a debate on the shipbuilding industry, as such, is not excluded, but I also said today that I hoped—and I think it natural on the Second Reading of a Bill like this—that references to shipping and shipbuilding might be brought in; but the exact scope of the references must be a matter for the Chair.

Mr. Emrys Hughes: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that there is grave disquiet in the country about the Government's attitude to the Cuban situation; and that there is a feeling in the House that this should not be obscured by a vague and rambling debate over two days on foreign affairs, when the issue cannot be directly challenged? Is the right hon. Gentleman not prepared to put down a Motion of confidence on the specific question of Cuba?

Mr. Butler: We must differentiate closely the extent of the responsibilities of Her Majesty's Government in relation to Cuba, and also avoid entrenching on the affairs of other countries, which is not a habit of this House. References to Cuba and, in particular, the United Nations and other places where British responsibility comes in, and to British citizens, and so on, could, I should have thought, be raised in the foreign affairs debate.

Sir M. Galpern: In view of the unprecedented unrest among Scottish teachers and the possibility of a strike of teachers in Glasgow on 8th May, can the Leader of the House find an opportunity for an early discussion next week on the Motion dealing with the critical situation in Scottish education?

[That this House deplores the attitude of the Secretary of State for Scotland towards the grave problems in Education, and in particular strongly protests against his attitude towards the present grievances of Scottish teachers in respect of dilution of the profession and the inadequacy of salaries and his refusal to accept the recommendation of the National Joint Council on the grounds that the Government is not prepared to meet the cost of an 18 per cent. increase in salaries; and

urges the Secretary of State to take immediate steps to remove these grievances in the interests of the education of children in Scotland]

Mr. Butler: It may be difficult to find time. I think that we had better see what the results of my right hon. Friend's latest suggestions are.

Mr. Marsh: Referring to the question asked by my hon. Friend the Member for South Ayrshire (Mr. Emrys Hughes), is it not impossible to divorce the American Government's action over Cuba from the welfare of this country and its foreign policy? Is it not therefore essential that the House should have an opportunity, in the interests of Western unity and of the Atlantic Alliance, to discuss this matter, and clearly to state its opinion on this specific issue?

Mr. Butler: I cannot accept the exact situation as quoted by the hon. Member, because I think that it would be most unwise to do so. I think that the question of Cuba could be raised in the foreign affairs debate. I do not see any other very easy occasion for doing so.

Mr. S. Silverman: May I press the right hon. Gentleman a little further on the point about a debate on Cuba? Is he not aware that there is considerable anxiety in the country, and certainly in the House—not always represented by the usual channels—about the urgency of the Cuban question, and the desirability of the House being given an opportunity to express its own view as to whether the Government's action, and proposed action, is right or wrong?
May I direct his attention to a question asked of the Lord Privy Seal yesterday by my hon. Friend the Member for Ebbw Vale (Mr. Michael Foot), who asked:
If the right hon. Gentleman and the Government are not prepared to urge an inquiry into how the invasion last week took place, will the right hon. Gentleman say whether Her Majesty's Government are now making representations to the United States Government that the offence should not be repeated?
Many hon. Members shouted: "Answer", and the Lord Privy Seal replied:
There is no question of making representations to the United States Government on this matter."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 26th April, 1961; Vol. 639, c.413.]


While I appreciate that that may be the Government's view and that some people may agree with it, there are a great many people who do not agree with it, and who regard this as a grave emergency, and a grave threat to world peace. Will not the Leader of the House give the House an opportunity of expressing its opinion as to whether or not the Government's pusillanimity is justified?

Mr. Butler: Again, I cannot accept that this is a primary responsibility of Her Majesty's Government. I do accept that it is a grave situation in world politics. I also agree that it could be raised in the foreign affairs debate, and as I do not see any other easy opportunity, subject to any representations that may be made I must adhere to that decision.

Miss Herbison: Further to the question asked by my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Shettleston (Sir M. Galpern), is not the right hon. Gentleman aware that, according to this morning's Press, the reaction of the Scottish teachers to the suggestions made by the Secretary of State for Scotland is not at all favourable? Is he not also aware that the Motion on the Order Paper deals with the question of dilution, which is perturbing Scottish teachers even more than is the question of salaries? Would he not give consideration to a very early debate so that we might avoid a strike of Scottish teachers, with all the grave harm that might do to education?

Mr. Butler: I have read the references in the Press. I hope that the situation has not reached finality. In view of the seriousness of the situation, all I can do today is to undertake to discuss the subject with my right hon. Friend.

Mr. Gower: Following the many questions asked on the subject, can my right hon. Friend not say even more emphatically that the responsibility for what has happened in Cuba is in no way that of Her Majesty's Government—

Mr. Speaker: Order. We must keep this time for business questions.

Mr. Fernyhough: Referring to the right hon. Gentleman's answer on Cuba, he will be aware that this House rightfully

found time to discuss the Hungarian crisis. Is he aware that some of us feel that just as on that occasion we found time to express our remorse and disgust at what had happened in Hungary, so, on this occasion, time should be found for the House to express its opinion on Cuba?

Mr. Butler: We have not yet crystallised the arrangements for the foreign affairs debate, but I think that there will be ample opportunity then for hon. Members to express their opinion.

Mr. Swingler: Whatever form the foreign affairs debate may take, could not the Leader of the House be a little more specific about when it will take place? He only said that it would be some time before Whitsun, but that is more than three weeks ahead, which means that we may have to wait perhaps that long before we have a chance to debate the subject. Can he not say definitely that the debate will take place the week after next?

Mr. Butler: I cannot give a definite date. We only announce business up to the Monday after next. We are trying to find out, because that is the request of the House, how we can fit in a two-day debate. I cannot go further today.

Mr. S. Silverman: As the Leader of the House speaks of the intention of having a two-day debate on foreign affairs, could it not be so arranged that one day is devoted specifically to the Cuban position?

Mr. Butler: The Leader of the House has to pay attention to a general request. I should have thought that if there was a general request one could pay attention to the point put by the hon. Member for Nelson and Colne (Mr. S. Silverman), but I am not yet satisfied that it would be the general view that a whole day should be devoted to this subject.

Mr. Shinwell: Is it the intention to have such a debate on the Adjournment, or do the Government propose to put down a Motion?

Mr. Butler: I think that it is more likely to be on the Adjournment, but we have not yet reached a decision.

Mr. Warbey: As the Leader of the House seems to be seeking additional


evidence of the desire of the House to have a day's debate devoted to Cuba alone, will he note that there are a considerable number of hon. Members who would like that to take place?

Mr. Butler: I think that most of the voices I have heard have come from a particular quarter.

BILL PRESENTED

LEGAL PROFESSION (QUALIFICATION FOR OFFICE)

Bill to make provision with respect to the qualification for office of barristers who have been solicitors, and for purposes connected therewith, presented by Mr. John Hobson; supported by Sir Frank Soskice, Mr. Graham Page, Mr. Eric Fletcher, and Mr. Donald Wade; read the First time; to be read a Second time upon Friday, 5th May, and to be printed. [Bill 116.]

Orders of the Day — SUPPLY

[12TH ALLOTTED DAY]

Considered in Committee.

[Sir GORDON TOUCHE in the Chair]

Orders of the Day — CIVIL ESTIMATES AND ESTIMATES FOR REVENUE DEPARTMENTS, 1961–62

Motion made, and Question proposed,
That a further sum, not exceeding £30, be granted to Her Majesty, towards defraying the charges for the year ending on the 31st day of March, 1962, for the following services connected with the operation of the Government's new pension scheme, namely:—


Civil Estimates, 1961–62



£


Class X, Vote 2 (Ministry of Pensions and National Insurance)
10


Class X, Vote 4 (National Insurance and Family Allowances)
10


Class X, Vote 5 (National Assistance Board)
10


Total
£30

Orders of the Day — NEW PENSION SCHEME

3.57 p.m.

Mr. Douglas Houghton: The new graduated pensions scheme has now begun. It has taken two years to get all the elaborate machinery ready. We understand that new offices have been built at Newcastle-upon-Tyne and that extra staff have been taken on. There are cards, microfilms, forms, guides, leaflets, Statutory Instruments—and I understand that an outsize in electronic computers has been devised as part of the enormous apparatus to get this scheme working. I would very much like to know how much money has been wasted on printing expensive booklets twice over because the first were out of date before the scheme began.
During the pensions debates in 1959 we warned the Minister that the contributions set up in the Bill could not conceivably stay as they were until April, 1961, because the Government would surely increase pensions before then. They did. The pensions increases were put into an amending Act last autumn, and the new rates came into operation


at the beginning of this month. With higher benefits came higher contributions. Two substantial booklets—the Employers' Guide, of 40 pages, and the General Guide, of 14 pages—had to be reprinted to bring all the figures up to date after last autumn's amending Act.
There was, however, more to it than that. The Government led everyone to believe that part of the magic of their scheme was that the contributions of those getting under £9 a week would be reduced, and that those lower-paid workers were to be relieved to the extent of 1s. 7d. a week in the case of men, and 10d. a week in the case of women. The Government went through the General Election with this promise on their lips. Within twelve months, it had been falsified. The only reduction that anybody has had is 2d. a week, instead of 1s. 7d. a week, for men—and nothing at all for women. Another 10d. a week extra for National Health Service contribution for men, and 8d. a week extra for women, in two months' time, should surely complete the disillusionment of all those who were taken in by the Government.
The Minister may say that the reason for the increased contributions was the increased pension, and that that is why the present contributions are higher than they were expected to be. That is exactly what we said would happen. We believed that it was plain that if the Government were to fulfil their pledge to give old-age pensioners a share in the increased prosperity of the nation, they could not, or would not, keep to the same contributions as they wrote into the Bill two years ago, yet the Government persisted with the myth that lower contributions would come about. The result is that the new scheme has begun with only a 2d. reduction in the flat-rate contribution for an employed man as the only remnant of the earlier promise.
The mischief goes even further. In the Finance Act last year, a new scale of tax reliefs on National Insurance contributions was agreed to. These were decided upon last year so that all the P.A.Y.E. codings for the tax year beginning on 6th April could include the new flat-rate reliefs. All the coding for this tax year was completed before Christmas and the actual work was in progress knowing that the reliefs in the

Finance Act of last year were out of date.
Now, in the Finance Bill, published today, there is a proposal to increase the relief on National Insurance contributions to take account of the fact that the expected reduction last year has not taken place. So the re-coding for P.A.Y.E. to give the new relief will cost the Inland Revenue 300,000 hours of overtime in the next few weeks—and this from a Government who talk about economies in administration.
If the Minister's excuse is the difficulty which he had in providing for increased pensions two years ahead, he could have done what we urged him to do in 1959, namely, to increase the pensions a year ago, even though he would have to draw on the National Insurance Reserve Fund to tide him over until the new contributions began this year. There was nothing impossible about that. The Minister is sitting on a nest egg of £1,500 million in the National Insurance Reserve Fund, a large part of it profit which he made in the earlier years on the National Insurance Scheme because of the overloading of the contributions for an unemployment level that we happily never had. Before leaving administration, although what I have to say concerns the level of benefits also, it is as well that the Committee should appreciate that there will be an enormous amount of office work for small and, in many cases, trivial benefits and, in other cases, no benefits at all.
One of the questions which people have been asking in recent weeks is about the position of those who are within a few weeks or months of retirement age. They are asking whether, in view of their imminent or early retirement, they have to pay graduated contributions if they are earning over £9 a week, and, if so, what benefit they will derive from them.
The answer is that they will have to pay for every week before they retire when they earn more than £9 a week, men and women, married women and single women, and that they cannot get any benefits out of the graduated scheme unless they pay enough for at least half a unit of graduated contributions, £7 10s. for men and £9 for women. If their contributions total less than half a unit, they get nothing at all. If their contributions exceed half a unit, they will get


the benefit of a full unit, which will be 6d. a week extra on their pension.
The Committee should, however, appreciate that it takes a man earning £15 a week or more 29 weeks, paying the maximum contribution of 5s. 1d. a week, to attain the half-unit mark and, therefore, to earn 6d. extra on his pension. A woman earning £15 a week paying the same amount of 5s. 1d. a week takes 36 weeks to reach half a unit and get 6d. extra on her pension. Those on lower earnings must obviously pay for a correspondingly longer period to qualify for the half-unit to give them any benefit at all. To many people, that will represent hardship. In any event, they will feel that they have been cheated out of benefit for contributions compulsorily paid from which, apparently, they will be unable to derive any advantage.
The fact is that for the contributions under the graduated scheme that began several weeks ago, little, if anything, will be paid out this year in benefits under the graduated scheme. All the graduated contributions collected this year will be used to pay for flat-rate pensions and will not ever be used to pay graduated benefits, which is supposed to be their purpose.
In some extreme cases in the scheme, one discovers almost unbelievable results. A man who earns less than £9 a week for 51 weeks in the year but who, in the fifty-second week, earns £15 for that week, will pay one contribution for that year at the maximum rate. If such a man was 21 years of age at the beginning of this month, he could continue to do that for forty-four years, one contribution a year at 5s. 1d. and his employer paying 5s. 1d., too, for only 6d. extra pension. If he were 51 instead of 21 at the beginning of this month, that same man could go on paying one maximum contribution per year for the next fourteen years and get nothing out of it at all.
We have the case of the married woman who has given up work and pays no flat-rate contributions on her own option, but must pay graduated contribution if she takes a job and earns over £9 in any week. She may go back to her old job or take temporary employment for a short period. She may be required to pay a graduated contribution for this short period of employment out

of which she will get little or no benefit. She could do one week's work in every year for forty-two years and still not qualify for an extra 1s. on her pension.
The Minister will be keeping hundreds of thousands of small accounts. Perhaps the best he can say of them is that the contribution will scarcely pay for the paper that he will use upon them. Leaving aside the trivial benefits, however, even the more tangible benefits are small enough. Many contributors under the graduated scheme are only just realising how meagre the pensions are. A man aged 40, earning £12 a week, will pay 2s. 8d. a week, and his employer another 2s. 8d., for twenty-five years to add 11s. 6d. to the pension. In the case of a married man, that would give on present figures a total of £5 3s. a week.
A woman aged 45, earning £12 a week, will pay 2s. 8d. and her employer another 2s. 8d. for fifteen years to add 6s. a week to her pension, which, for a single woman, would give a total of £3 3s. 6d. a week, including the flat-rate pension. In both those cases, the people concerned would do better on National Assistance now. Indeed, on these scales, they will still need National Assistance, taking the existing National Assistance scale at 53s. 6d. a week plus rent in the case of a single person and 90s. a week plus rent in the case of a marked couple.
As far as I can calculate, the maximum extra pension which can be earned over forty years of employment at the £15 rate would be 35s. a week, giving a total pension for a married couple of £6 7s. 6d. a week. In present conditions, even that is a bare living. It cannot be regarded as adequate subsistence for a married couple. This is not only the basic pension, but the graduated pension at the maximum rate added to it.
Furthermore, there is no provision in the 1959 Act for an improvement in the graduated benefits. One may ask what 6d. extra a week on the pension will be worth in twenty years' time. Indeed, what will 11s. 6d. extra on the pension be worth in twenty years' time? These questions illustrate the inadequate scale upon which the graduated scheme has been based.
We know the financial secret of all this. It is, perhaps, a coincidence that in 1959, when the Minister said that


taxation must be relieved of the emerging burden of the National Insurance Scheme, the Government found it possible to reduce Income Tax by £230 million a year and, in 1961, when that scheme comes into operation, the Government find it possible to reduce Surtax by £83 million a year. These are the two key dates and the two key events within which we must put the graduated pension scheme to appreciate the transfer from taxation to the contributor, from payment according to ability to pay to contributions which ignore ability to pay.
What the Minister is doing in the scheme is to make a huge profit in the years to come on the graduated pension part of the scheme and to use it to meet the deficit on the flat-rate part of the scheme, the emerging cost of which, the Minister said, was getting too heavy for the taxpayer reasonably to bear. What the Exchequer was going to find out of taxation, the contributor will now pay in a somewhat bitter pill with a little graduated jam on it.
Let us look for a moment at what this profit will amount to. This year, it is estimated that about £100 million will be collected in graduated contributions. The benefits paid out under the graduated scheme will to all intents and purposes be nil. In ten years' time—that is, in 1971–72—it is estimated that £295 million in contributions will be collected and the estimated payments out of the graduated part of the scheme will be only £16 million. In twenty years' time, in 1981–82, the contributions are estimated to reach £391 million and benefits under the graduated scheme £63 million. In forty years' time, if we can look as far ahead as that in present circumstances in the world, the contributions are estimated to yield £537 million and the benefits paid out in graduated contributions just less than £200 million. Therefore, if we look at the profit to be made on the graduated side of the scheme, we find that in ten years' time it will be £280 million a year, in twenty years' time, £330 million a year, and in forty years' time, £340 million a year.
We know where the surplus will be going. It will go to pay for the flat-rate benefits. That is how the flat-rate pension scheme gets out of the "red".

Instead of taxing according to ability to pay, we shall find that a man on £10 a week will have 1s. 2d. a week stopped out of each £1 of his earnings, while a man on £25 a week will pay only 7d. in each £1 of his earnings, which seems to be graduation in reverse: the more one earns, the less in proportion one pays.
The Minister, however, may say that we must consider the two schemes together, that we must bring them together to consider the finances and the value of the combined National Insurance Scheme. I agree that, up to a point, one has to look at the two schemes together although when the flat-rate scheme was already there and is still to remain there and for many people will be the only scheme there is, the new scheme, with its separate contributions and separate benefits, must be looked at separately as regards its purpose and its terms. Neither the purpose nor the terms of the combined scheme gain approval from this side of the Committee.
We believe that the grievous fault of the graduated scheme is the concentration of contributions in the narrow wage band of £9 to £15 a week and the excessive use of graduated contributions to finance a deficit of the flat-rate scheme which should be met to a greater extent out of the Exchequer contribution.
That brings me to the question of contracting out. We understand that over 4 million employees have been contracted out and that about half of them are public servants, which looks as though the Government have erected this elaborate apparatus of contracting out principally for their own use. I have always held the view—I expressed it during the Committee stage of the 1959 Bill—that, for a scheme of these modest proportions, it is extremely doubtful whether contracting out was justified. My belief is that universal compulsory insurance could be carried a stage further than the Minister has chosen to carry it, especially as those who are contracted out have to be taxed separately and specially by being required to pay more for their flat-rate benefits than those left in the scheme.
Of those who are contracted out, men are paying 1s. 7d. a week more than those left in the combined scheme for the same flat-rate benefits. For women,


it is 10d. a week more. There is a good deal of confusion and misunderstanding about this and hon. Members, probably on both sides, have received letters from those who have been contracted out asking why they have to pay more for the same flat-rate benefit which those left in the scheme receive. The answer is that, since they are not paying a graduated contribution which can be milked, they must pay an extra contribution in the form of tribute for the privilege of being left out of the graduated scheme.
Last December, I asked the Minister whether he would issue a statement explaining to people who are contracted out the reasons why they have to pay an extra contribution for the flat-rate benefit. Hon. Members will find the Minister's reply in cols. 109 and 110 of the Written Answers in the OFFICIAL REPORT of 19th December, 1960. I was obliged to the Minister for going to so much trouble, but I defy any hon. Member to discern in the Minister's official statement the real truth of the reason why the contracted-out contributor has to pay more than the person who is left in. His statement is wrapped up in obscure phraseology and it does not reveal the true facts of the situation.
Concerning those who have been contracted out, it would be interesting if the Minister could supply the Committee, perhaps in answer to a Question, later, with an analysis of the type and numbers of employees who have been contracted out. I have referred to the fact that civil servants, teachers, local government officers, police, firemen and many others in the public sector have been contracted out. We also understand that some large industrial firms have decided to leave their employees in the graduated scheme, although they have an occupational scheme which might pass the test for contracting out. It would be interesting to know how the other half of those contracted out is made up.
In conclusion, it cannot be too clearly understood by the country at large and those contributing to the graduated scheme that this is not a genuine pension scheme, but a gigantic reshuffling of the finances of social security. The motive behind the scheme was not to provide extra pensions. It was to solve the financial difficulties of the flat-rate scheme. People earning over £9 a week are to pay

through the nose for benefits quite inadequate for their needs and manifestly not value for money. By this means contributors are to pay more so that the Exchequer may pay less, which is like levying one's creditors to pay one's debtors.

4.21 p.m.

The Joint Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Pensions and National Insurance (Miss Patricia Hornsby-Smith): I have listened with great interest to the speech of the hon. Member for Sowerby (Mr. Houghton). I hope to deal with most of the points that he raised and with the case set out in the recently published document of the Labour Party entitled, "The Pensions Fraud. A Guide to the Tory Scheme for Poverty in Old Age". [HON. MEMBERS: "Hear, hear."] Hon. Members opposite may not be quite so pleased when I have dealt with them. My right hon. Friend will deal with the points that I am not able to cover.
Today, the Opposition have tried to prove that the new graduated pension scheme is a fraud and a swindle. This is an accusation which the Government wholeheartedly repudiate. We must recognise that this debate is a propaganda exercise to cover the shortcomings of the Opposition's national superannuation scheme which they are now in the process of rehashing. However, we have one meeting point, probably the only one.
The hon. Gentleman admits that something had to be done to put the pension scheme on a sound financial basis. We cannot go on paying pensions with an actuarial value ten times higher than the maximum employer and employee's contributions without finding the money from somewhere. Last year, we paid out about £90 million more than we received from employers, employees and the Exchequer supplement to contributions of £126 million. If nothing had been done, that deficit, even on the former 50s. pension, would have reached about £425 million a year in twenty years' time, in addition to the statutory supplement from the Exchequer. It would be unrealistic for the Committee not to take these facts into consideration.
Because of this, the 1959 Act and the graduated pension scheme were deliberately designed to meet future commitments for pensions on the pay-as-you-go


basis. Further—and I make no apology for it—the 1959 Act deliberately weighted the Government's subsidy in favour of the lower-paid workers and largely provided that the young and better-off people should aid the old and the retired. I cannot see that the Opposition can find fault with that. It also provided an opportunity for those earning more than £9 a week who were not contracted out to earn higher eventual pensions.
The real difference between the hon. Member and myself is that the Socialists believe that pensions should be more heavily subsidised by the Government. It sounds so much nicer to say "subsidised by the Government" than to say, "put on the taxpayer". How much more honest it would be if they said, "We will not take it off your insurance, but slap it on your P.A.Y.E.".
It has been a cardinal principle of national insurance that it should have a firm contributory basis and provide a pension as of right. As hon. Members know, this principle was overwhelmingly endorsed by the Beveridge Committee and it has been consistently upheld by the T.U.C. To load millions of pounds more on the Exchequer would inevitably jeopardise the pension-as-of-right principle and make what is now an independent pension fund much more a matter of direct budgetary policy.
We have been told that the Exchequer is not paying its fair "whack". This year the Exchequer will find £189 million for the National Insurance Fund. How anyone can suggest that he is being swindled with a subsidy of that magnitude from the taxpayer I do not know. This is the largest annual payment yet made by the Exchequer to the Insurance Fund. Since the 1946 Act, the lowest payment made was when, under legislation for which the Leader of the Opposition was responsible, the Exchequer payment fell from £139 million to £65 million in two years.

Mr. William Ross: We are here dealing with what people in employment pay today. Will the right hon. Lady tell us who received the money which was paid out last year—the people who are paying, or the people who have already retired?

Miss Hornsby-Smith: It is a combination of both.

Mr. Ross: The right hon. Lady knows quite well that the bulk of expenditure is on retirement pensions for people who have already retired.

Miss Hornsby-Smith: Any payments from the fund for pensions will naturally go to retired people. Surely that is the subject of this debate. Nothing that hon. Members opposite do will alter the fact that any pensions expenditure goes to people already retired. They would not otherwise be drawing their pension.
It is also interesting to note the proportion which has been paid by the contributor and by the Government. In 1951, under the Socialist Government, the contributors provided 89·9 per cent. of the total payout. This year, 1961–62, for higher benefits to more pensioners, contributors will pay only 81·5 per cent. Therefore, the proportion of the Exchequer contribution is higher than the contribution made by the Exchequer when hon. Members opposite were in office. The current Exchequer payment represents a quarter of the flat-rate contributions. In twenty years time the supplement will be £238 million from the taxpayer. It is, therefore, clear that the taxpayer will continue to make a substantial annual contribution to the Insurance Fund. This in itself destroys the idea that the contributor is being swindled.
What hon. Members opposite now advocate contrasts strangely with what they advocated when they were in office. On the one hand, we have the plea of the hon. Member for Coventry, East (Mr. Crossman) at the Labour Party Conference, for an increase in pensions to be met by taxation. Hon. Members opposite now ask that the Exchequer should bear the main burden of pensions. Yet in their policy statement, "National Superannuation", they categorically reaffirm the insurance principle and make plain that the overwhelming body of opinion among trade unionists is that the fund should continue to be financed largely by the payment of contributions, as they feel that the worker then can receive the benefits as of right and that, therefore, no politician could take them away.

Mr. Houghton: The right hon. Lady will recall that the basis of contribution was to be 5 per cent. from the


employer and 3 per cent. from the employee with the remaining 2 per cent. as an Exchequer contribution of the average earnings of the nation. That was to be applicable to the graduated scheme as well as to the other scheme. Under the Government scheme, no Exchequer contribution whatever is made to the graduated scheme.

Miss Hornsby-Smith: With great respect, I do not think that that alters my argument. Hon. Members opposite are busy recasting the finance of that original proposal. I shall deal with certain aspects of it later and I hope to prove that their scheme would do considerable damage to very large areas of the field of occupational pensions were it brought into operation as they have outlined it.
In concentrating their attack on the graduated part of the scheme, hon. Members opposite have deliberately divided the pension into two bits, yet, strangely enough, when they speak of their own pension scheme they refer to it as one. As they know very well, the only fair analysis is on the basis of the figure on a man's pension book when he draws it. I exonerate the hon. Member for Sowerby from this, because in one of his not infrequent flashes of objective rather than political thinking, he has admitted, in Socialist Commentary, that whether our scheme is a swindle
depends on whether we look at the scheme as a whole or whether we look at the graduated scheme by itself".
The hon. Member for Sowerby, therefore, honestly admits that the pension which a man receives on retirement, on our joint scheme, is not a fraud and not a swindle. But even if we take the graduated part of the pension by itself the scheme gives the workers, the majority of whom have not enjoyed the benefits of an occupational scheme, a good return for what they have paid in.
It will be seen that for every £7 10s. "brick" paid in by the male employee, with average expectation of life at pension age, the Government scheme gives a return of £15 12s., and the return is higher if he leaves a widow. For every £9 paid in by a woman, who may retire five years earlier and, on average, lives longer—and I always wonder why we are called the weaker sex—the average is £24. The total pension is a good bargain.
I take the hon. Member for Sowerby to task for his calculations about people

who are in the scheme for only a short time. The hon. Member worked on a sum of £7 10s. But to earn an additional 6d. the employee would have to pay for only 15 weeks not 29 weeks, as the hon. Member said, and the sum he would have to pay is £3 15s. not £7 10s. We shall be paying some pensions increased in this way before the end of the year.
The hon. Member referred to various examples. In the Labour Party document, which, presumably, will be widely circulated, and possibly widely read, the party takes what it considers to be the worst possible case it could find to prove that our scheme is a swindle. I do not blame hon. Members opposite for that. It is a fair debating point. To discredit our scheme, the document states that a lad of 18, earning £13 a week, who will retire eventually at 65 in the year 2008, will have a pension of only £6 a week.
To get this figure hon. Members opposite assume that for forty-seven long years the lad never gets promotion and never gets a rise in pay. They assume that during forty-seven years wage-rates do not rise at all, and that for forty-seven years there is no rise in the basic flat rate pension—when, in fact, we have had five rises in the last ten years.
Such a fantasy is really an insult to one's intelligence. If that is the best example that right hon. and hon. Members opposite can dream up against the Government scheme they must be very bankrupt of valid criticism. There is also the point that as the Labour Party is pledged to increase the flat-rate pension, right hon. and hon. Members opposite apparently assume that we shall not have a Labour Government for forty-seven years.

The Minister of Pensions and National Insurance (Mr. John Boyd-Carpenter): That is probably right.

Miss Hornsby-Smith: Right hon. and hon. Members opposite complain that the £9-a-week worker is not affected by the graduated scheme, but he is. It has enabled him to get higher benefits for slightly lower contributions. It is a mean spirit that does not welcome that, and I again exonerate the hon. Member for Sowerby, because he has already acknowledged it in an article in Socialist Commentary and he has said that there is nothing wrong with it.
The basic flat-rate pension is and will remain the major part of the insurance pension and, therefore, it is relevant to consider it. We have been accused of abandoning the post-war aim of adequate pensions as of right. In fact, we have increased the pension four times, and on the last two occasions the greater part of the increase has given pensioners an increase in the real value of their pension as well. Over the years hon. Members opposite have argued that the pension should be tied to the cost of living. Had we tied it to the cost of living, the 26s. pension of 1946 would be 44s. 11d. today instead of 57s. 6d.

Mr. James Dempsey: Ugh.

Miss Hornsby-Smith: It is no use the hon. Member saying "Ugh". It is a fact. The married rate, on a cost-of-living basis, would be 72s. 7d. today as against the present 92s. 6d. These differences of 12s. 7d. and 19s. 11d. are a measure of the way in which we have kept our pledge to the old people and have done outstandingly better than a cost-of-living index increase would have provided.
Nor do we forget that, when hon. Members opposite were in office, by their partial increase of the pension rate from 26s. to 30s., in 1951, they did not even keep pace with the cost of living. Hon. Members opposite have also mentioned, automatic increases, which they know very well are impracticable. One cannot bob pensions up and down every month in accordance with the cost-of-living index. But even assuming that they could find some method of changing the pensions far more frequently, the Labour Party speaks with two voices on this issue of an increase, whether on the basis of the Index of Retail Prices, or on the basis of the new "dynamism" to which they refer in their document entitled, "National Superannuation", and which is supposed to be linked with earnings or national wealth.
In this document the party opposite provides for selective treatment. It claims that once a person was retired his pension would be made "inflation proof" only to the extent of keeping up with the cost-of-living. Thus, the so-called "dynamism" which links pensions to earnings and national wealth

would only apply during the pensioner's working life. Hon. Members opposite now claim, in another voice, that the existing pensioners, numbering 5½ million, would receive the dynamic treatment, too, which they were not to do according to "National Superannuation". But they give no explanation of how the money is to be raised. If it is to be raised by taxation, every 10s. extra on the pension represents roughly £200 million on the Exchequer.

Mr. Houghton: Does the right hon. Lady not realise that in 1957 the Labour Party was pioneering in this field? It was blazing a trail which the Government took up twelve months later.

Miss Hornsby-Smith: I am glad to acknowledge that we at least took up the trail to that extent. The hon. Member cannot complain about that. We have been anxious to maintain the insurance principle and also to ensure that we do not mislead people into thinking that what they avoided paying in contributions they would not have flung on to their P.A.Y.E.
Then hon. Members opposite have complained about the smallness and niggardliness of our graduated scheme. We are criticised for its modest level. This was deliberate and we make no apology for it. We believe that private schemes are of infinite value to the employee and can be more easily tailored to his needs than a State scheme. A classic example is how the miners' scheme is tailored to the needs of the mining industry. I am sure that there is not an hon. Member opposite who would wish to see that scheme superseded.
We do not seek to destroy private insurance schemes. Provided that they are at least as good as the State scheme, we hope that they will flourish. We do not seek to take so much of a man's income that he loses the right to dispose of a large part of it in the way that he thinks fit. If he wishes to dispose of his savings on wider family insurance, or on buying his house, we think that it is perfectly right for him to do so.
Again, taking this document, "The Pensions Fraud", I do not think that any true comparison can be made between the State scheme, whether it is


our State scheme or that of hon. Members opposite, and a private scheme. The State scheme gives the advantage of every increase in the flat rate—and there have been five in the last ten years—without retrospectively increasing the contributions of the employee or his employer. Thus, on his own and his employer's contribution, the insured person gets a better total pension than he could reasonably expect to obtain by private insurance. The amount paid out in benefit today is, and always will be, greater than the amount paid by the contributors—employers and employees—because a very substantial payment is made by Exchequer subsidy. How, then, can it be a swindle, if these vast sums are coming from the Exchequer?
The Opposition complain that very small sums will be paid out in the earlier years. The hon. Member for Sowerby made great play about it. He knows, as well as I do, that this was recognised in his own party's publication "National Superannuation":
In the nature of things, a superannuation scheme does not become fully operative until after a considerable number of years.
An insured person pays contributions in his working life so that he may have a pension on retirement.
Why there should be criticism of what is going into reserve and talk about the profits that we are building up? Has the hon. Member forgotten that according to his own party's calculations the Socialist scheme would pay out nothing at all in the first year? In ten years the Socialist scheme would have accumulated £4,000 million and in the tenth year would pay out £37 million. Who is the hon. Member to talk to us about building up profits?

Mr. Houghton: The hon. Lady is pointing the finger of scorn at me. May I point out to her that the Labour Party scheme was to be financed on entirely different principles from the Government scheme? The accumulation of contributions was to be funded and the interest on investments was to provide benefits later on. The Government scheme is simply "pay as you go"—a straight transfer from graduated contributions to flat-rate benefit.

Miss Hornsby-Smith: I always enjoy the hon. Member's eloquence, but with

great respect I say that he cannot criticise building up the Insurance Fund's reserve, on the one hand, and suddenly make that wholly reputable, on the other. The accumulated funds will not be paid out year by year for the excellent reason that the contributions are paid for many years of the insured person's working life and are subsequently drawn out on retirement. This cannot be derided if the Government do it and applauded as wonderful if the party opposite do it.
We come to the individual. The party opposite has said that the Government scheme is a fraud and swindle. On page 11 of its document, "The pensions Fraud", it is bitterly complained that 9 million people are left out. How inconsistent can hon. Members opposite be? If the scheme is a fraud, hon. Members opposite ought to be rejoicing that these people are left out. They cannot have it both ways. If they say that it is a fraud because the under £9 per week worker is left out they are, by implication, suggesting that the people who contribute to the scheme are the lucky ones and, therefore, the scheme is a good one.
In fact, over 6 million employed persons between 18 and 65 will at any one time not be paying graduated contributions. The latest figures are that just over 4 million of the 6 million will be women, many of whom work part time and many of whom have chosen not to pay contributions towards their flat-rate benefit. The figure will also include those sick or unemployed and temporarily not paying graduated contributions and a number of young people between 18 and 21 who can be expected to earn graduated pensions as they get on in their jobs. According to the Ministry of Labour Survey, published today, the number of men in full-time employment with average earnings of £9 a week or less is very small indeed.
Again, I think that we are entitled to look at the Socialist alternative to our scheme. The hon. Member for Sowerby has endorsed, at any rate by implication, the claims made by his hon. Friend the Member for Coventry, East (Mr. Crossman.) The Labour Party continues to assume that the whole provision for old age must come from State schemes. Much of what the hon. Member said this afternoon, particularly when he said that the graduated pension scheme could


reasonably have been imposed on private schemes, endorses that view.
This is the very foundation of the Opposition's scheme. It is important for us to consider it. It is not realistic, in an age when half the employed men are covered by occupational schemes, for the Government to make virtually compulsory contributions on salaries of up to £2,000 a year or more. Recently, in a broadcast, I think that I heard a Labour spokesman say that it should possibly be £2,500 a year.
Let us get clear in our minds what this means. The whole finance of the Labour Party scheme is based on the very high contributions which it intends to get out of the higher paid workers, most of whom are already covered by occupational schemes. The Labour Party has been very coy about the extent to which it is prepared to allow the £2,000 a year man to contract out. I confess that it is in a very real dilemma. If it allows contracting out—and from recent pronouncements it does not appear to want to—it loses the subsidisers and is left with the subsidised, and the foundation of the whole scheme collapses.
If, on the other hand, it intends to deny contracting out, or makes the conditions so stringent that it is virtually impossible to do so, the public and the 8 million people in these schemes are entitled to know. Would the Labour Party, for example, make civil servants, teachers, doctors, nurses, and local government officials come into the State scheme and abandon their own individual schemes? Would they tinker with the miners' pension fund? Or is its approach purely partisan and does it propose to attack only private industrial occupational schemes and make them impossible?
In comparing the Government's scheme and the Labour Party's proposals, we have to bear in mind that if the figures upon which it makes its calculations are to be fulfilled this can only be done at the expense of a vast number of occupational schemes which are in operation today and which cover more than half the people in the State's employ, people employed by nationalised boards and in public services.
We should look for a moment at the number of those who have contracted out of the graduated pension scheme. A

total of 4,270,439 have contracted out. Of these, 1,612,908 are in the public services, 1,052,846 are in the nationalised industries, and 1,604,685 are in private industry.
The Socialist attack on the graduated scheme is part of a sordid campaign to make people believe that the Tory party is destroying the Welfare State. It is as "phoney" and ill-founded as the Socialist attacks on the Government's housing and education record. Yet the Socialists themselves have no workable alternative. When they were in office they watched the old-age pensioners get steadily worse off. It was they who slashed the Government subsidy and did nothing to meet approaching deficits in the National Insurance Fund.
It ill befits them to condemn an admirable scheme which enables people with higher incomes to earn higher pensions and provides higher pensions at no greater cost for the lower paid workers and, of course, for all existing pensioners.

Mr. Houghton: The right hon. Lady overlooks the fact that the Labour Government increased the 10s. pension to 26s., and the £1 pension to 42s. as the first measure of social security they introduced. Why do we have to have these tiresome references to the past without the whole truth being told? The Labour Party has not been in office for a decade. When we left office it was under conditions in the world and in this country quite different from those of today. These past ten years have made a difference. Yet the right hon. Lady harks back to failures of the Labour Government when she should be paying more attention to failures of her own Government.

Miss Hornsby-Smith: The hon. Gentleman cannot get away from the fact that, despite all the Labour Party's protests about keeping up with the cost of living, and their new, grandiose schemes, during the six years of Labour administration the pension ran down in value from 26s. to roughly 21s. When they did make an increase, it was by only 4s., which did not even make up for the run down.
Members opposite dislike this analogy, but in every case they have compared the Government's latest rate with the former one, and I am rightly comparing the rate which the Labour Government


thought, fit to introduce with the far greater rise in the cost of living and pointing out that they never even made up the loss.

Mr. Ross: For long periods during the Conservative administration, the value of the pension, even after being raised, has been below what it was during the period of office of the Labour Government. The right hon. Lady said that the Government are providing a higher flat-rate pension at no greater cost to the lower-paid worker. How is this being done, and how was it done after the last increase?

Miss Hornsby-Smith: The current stamp is 9s. 9d. A week or so ago it was 9s. 11d. Contributors earning under £9 a week have been paying 9s. 11d., and now they pay 9s. 9d. The basic benefits, either pensions or unemployment or sickness benefit, are 57s. 6d. single and 92s. 6d. double. Therefore, the contributors earning under £9 a week are getting higher benefits for no greater National Insurance contributions.

Mr. Ross: Under the graduated scheme, which we are supposed to be discussing today, that contribution was to be reduced to 8s. 4d. but the last pensions increase was paid for by charging even the lower-paid workers an increase of 1s. 5d. in contributions, with the employers' contribution also being increased by this amount.
If the Minister would wipe the smile off his face and look at the Second Quinquennial Report, published in 1960, he would see that it said quite clearly that future general increases would have to be followed by general increases in contributions. That is what was done to lower-paid workers when they had to pay an extra 1s. 5d.—the same amount paid by higher-paid workers.

Miss Hornsby-Smith: Perhaps the hon. Gentleman may be able to convince a man who has been paying 9s. 11d. a week and now pays 9s. 9d. a week, for higher benefits, that he is paying 1s. 5d. more. I am surprised at the hon. Gentleman. He is a Scotsman, too.

Mr. Dempsey: The party opposite promised a reduction at the last General Election.

Miss Hornsby-Smith: Certainly, but the new rates of pension had not come

in then. The fact remains that higher basic benefits are being paid. I know that Members opposite do not like this and are trying to camouflage it, but the fact is that higher benefits are being paid while less is being taken from pay packets.
I hope that I have uncovered some of the fallacies of the Labour Party's document, but my right hon. Friend will more than make up for my omissions when he replies to the debate. I repudiate the charges made against the graduated pension scheme and outlined in this unworthy publication by the Labour Party. I ask the Committee to endorse the sound policy followed by my right hon. Friend by giving him a resounding majority and rejecting forcibly the still only half baked and disastrously inflationary schemes of the Opposition.

4.59 p.m.

Mr. James Dempsey: One is tempted to intervene in this debate after listening to the speech by the right hon. Lady the Joint Parliamentary Secretary. I had understood that we were to discuss the management and working of the new graduated pension scheme. Instead, we have been treated to a dissertation about failures of the Labour Government. The right hon. Lady went so far as to juggle with figures in trying to convince us that under the Labour Government a pension increase was not really an increase at all.
In the course of gyrations in relation to the value of the pension, the right hon. Lady completely forgot to mention that during the last ten years the value of the £ has fallen, even under this Government. She never mentioned it in her speech, but it further decreased the real value of the present pensions, and she should admit it.
I must confess that I have always regarded ladies, whether in the House of Commons or elsewhere, as being the gentle sex but, after hearing the dissertation of scorn and the pouring out of abuse by the Parliamentary Secretary, I have reached the conclusion that there are exceptions to the general rule. I am not at all pleased about my conclusion, since the Parliamentary Secretary is a nice looking lady, well dressed, presentable and charming, and it is somewhat


alarming to find that she can be so wicked and vicious in her references to other hon. Members.
Here we are, endeavouring to ascertain what is happening under this scheme, and all we have had from the Parliamentary Secretary is an address on the Labour Party's scheme. It therefore seems to rest with me to explain the implications of the Government scheme, which has been described as a swindle. Why has such a phraseology been applied to it? I can best explain my arguments by illustration.
A man earning between £9 and £15 a week will be paying, say, about 2s. 6d. a week to the graduated scheme, or £6 10s. a year. If he is 45 and he continues to pay for the ensuing twenty years, he naturally pays twenty times £6 10s., which is £130. The result is that he receives 6d. for every £7 10s., if I am correct, or approximately 8s. 9d. a week as a superannuation pension—and that is after paying 2s. 6d. per week for twenty years. Can anyone suggest that this is a generous scheme and that that man will receive a reasonable degree of social equity? Naturally, the benefit at the end of the day will not be adequate to meet his needs. That is one of the arguments being put forward by the Opposition as to why the Exchequer should be making a contribution in addition to the employers and employees contribution. Only in that way will the individual be able to look forward to a reasonable pension during his period of retirement.
May I use another illustration to support my argument? A man earning between £9 and £15 a week, if he is 40 years old, will have to meet his contributions for a period of twenty-five years to qualify for a pension. At the end of that period he will receive approximately 11s. 3d. a week. Taking the argument a stage further, a man who has to pay for thirty years on the same basis, and on the same wage, will receive a pension of about 13s. a week. These rates are obviously extremely inadequate to meet the needs of anyone in retirement. That is why it is a misnomer to call this a graduated pension scheme. It is misleading and misrepresenting the facts to talk about superannuity during the period of retirement.
After a man has made a lifetime's contribution to the economy of the country, by working in industry and service and by contributing towards his pension, it is unfair that he should receive miserable allowances such as I have described during his days of economic adversity. I have been giving, as an example, men earning between £9 and £15 a week, and to these individuals the pension benefits are so inadequate that they will require to be supplemented by National Assistance during the rainy days ahead.
The Parliamentary Secretary referred to Exchequer payments into the scheme. It is true that the Exchequer contribution has increased considerably. But it is even more true to say that the employees' and the employers' contribution has increased much more. I ask the Parliamentary Secretary to measure the increase in the Exchequer contribution not in the way she did, but from 1950 up to the present time.

Miss Hornsby-Smith: The hon. Gentleman must be mistaken, because I gave the figures for which he is asking. I said that, in 1951, 89·9 per cent. was paid by contributors, employers and employees. At present, the figure is 81 per cent. The hon. Gentleman cannot, therefore, complain that the Exchequer has not maintained a fair contribution.

Mr. Dempsey: I have already said that figures are made to lie. I will not, however, complete the quotation. I merely asked the Parliamentary Secretary to have another look at this matter from a statistically different point of view. She will find that the overall Exchequer contribution during the reign of the Tory Government has gone up by about 80 per cent.—and I admit that—but the Parliamentary Secretary must compare that with the global total increase paid by contributors. On doing that, she will find that the contributors' contribution has gone up during the same period from 4s. 11d. a week to its present level, and that that represents an increase of 260 per cent.
The Exchequer contribution has not, therefore, marched hand in hand and does not correspond with the contributors' increase. That cannot be denied. In Scotland, we say, "Facts are chiels that winna ding "—but perhaps someone


will explain the meaning of that to the Parliamentary Secretary later.
We must be fair in our attitude towards the principle of superannuation. I want to see superannuation working effectively and I am criticising the scheme because it does not fulfil the obligations of superannuation as we understand it. Many people are worried about this question. I belonged to a form of employment which has a trade union that introduced superannuation for the first time in the history of that employment. In introducing that scheme, provision was made whereby women who were likely to leave their employment to be married should have their contribution repaid, with interest. What I should like to know is: in circumstances where such employees who are now part of the graduated pension scheme leave to get married, will their contribution be refunded, with or without the interest those contributions have earned during the period the contributor has been in the superannuation fund?

Miss Hornsby-Smith: In many ways, the Government scheme is better than the scheme the hon. Gentleman has described, because when they leave, the general rule in occupational schemes is that they get their own contribution back, plus interest. Under the graduated scheme, the pension that they have paid for will be frozen, and when they eventually come to retire it will be an addition to the amount of their husband's insurance or to that which they have earned on their own. In the long run, they retain the pension they have earned, rather than get back their own contribution and interest.

Mr. Dempsey: May I take it that in the event of these ladies not being spared to reach retiral age, their contributions die and the interest rate dies with them? There is no return for the present arrangement whereby the contributions are refunded with interest at the time of marriage. This should be clearly understood—

Mr. Raymond Gower: Does not the hon. Member appreciate that that is true in the case of practically every contributor? If any person contributing to a national scheme of this kind dies, his contributions die.

Mr. Ross: There is no other national scheme of this kind. This is the first one.

Mr. Gower: To this scheme.

Mr. Ross: The hon. Member should be exact.

Mr. Dempsey: What, in essence, the Parliamentary Secretary said is that thousands of employees who now treat their superannuation payments plus the interest which they bear as a marriage dowry will lose that right. I am not talking about local superannuation schemes. I am talking of the Scottish superannuation scheme, and if this can be accomplished in Scotland there is no reason why it should not be the practice in this country.
The Parliamentary Secretary has made a startling and shameful admission to the effect that thousands of ladies can say goodbye to their marriage dowry as a result of the graduated pension scheme. The hon. Lady would have been better employed addressing herself to a solution of this problem than in making scurrilous attacks on right hon. and hon. Members on this side of the Committee.
These are aspects of the scheme which we should like to see removed. I know that figures have been bandied about in the Committee and figures may be misrepresented in more ways than one. But the figures which I have quoted are accurate, because they are based on the 6d. per £7 10s. of contribution. For that reason, I say that the benefit is inadequate and because of that people have been driven to take out private insurance. The Co-operative movement offers an independent, individual, private insurance scheme which is far better than the one proposed by the Government.
Now that the scheme is under way the Minister and the Government should review its working in the coming months and make it their business to see that it is a success, as it could be were it organised on better financial lines, with a contribution from the Exchequer and, as a consequence, more adequate benefits. If the Minister and his Parliamentary Secretary would approach the problem of superannuation in that way, something worth while might be accomplished. At the moment, the word applied to this scheme is a misnomer. It is a complete fallacy as a superannuation scheme, because the element of benefit would be less than the level of National Assistance.
The aim and object of a perfect superannuation scheme should be to enable people to retire in receipt of a reasonable amount without regard to means test or needs test or any other interference with the private rights of a man and his family. This is a misrepresentation of the principle and that is why I criticise the scheme. We cannot allow the present state of affairs to continue. The scheme should be made to work. It could be made a success provided the benefits to be received in the twilight of a man's working life are more reasonable and more adequate to meet the needs of retired pensioners.
It is my considered opinion that unless this is revitalised and made more generous, as a superannuation scheme it will not meet the needs of the recipients, or wishes and aspirations of the organised working people of the country, which is simply to enjoy a secure and contented eventide.

5.15 p.m.

Mr. Arthur Tiley: I am glad to follow the hon. Member for Coatbridge and Airdrie (Mr. Dempsey). Like all other hon. Members opposite, he wants a bigger pension for every man and woman in their happy old age. But when he looks at the way to pay for it, then, like the Labour Party he shirks the responsibility. The hon. Member said that he was afraid of inflation. So are we all in this matter. And that is why, when "National Superannuation" first came out—

Mr. Dempsey: I never used the word "inflation".

Mr. Tiley: I used the word "inflation" because it shortened the form of the sentences which the hon. Member used to explain the value of the pension coming down. I thought that I could save a bit of time for the Committee by so doing.
The hon. Member said that the Government's scheme was a swindle and a fraud. I will deal with that later. But if it is, the whole of the proceeds are going to our present pensioners every week, every month and throughout the whole year. The whole proceeds of what we are collecting will go to the old folk now.
I do not wish to get into trouble with the female sex, but the hon. Member for Coatbridge and Airdrie made a point about pensions for the womenfolk. It is my experience that in these matters womenfolk are interested in marriage and not in old age. It has never been effectively pointed out to them, according to "National Superannuation", that they would retire at 65 years of age. After all the years of striving by our women and the efforts of Mrs. Florence White—a constituent of mine, who spent years in getting spinsters a pension five years earlier—in "National Superannuation" the age was put back to 65.
The hon. Member for Sowerby (Mr. Houghton) enjoyed himself immensely by giving examples from the graduated scheme, and my right hon. Friend was correct to point out that there are not two pension schemes, but only one. There is a basic scheme. There are two methods of collecting the premiums and we ought to be glad that there are, because, by collecting the graduated pension in this way, for the first time we have been able to stop the working of what hon. Members opposite call a poll tax on the lower-paid workers. At long last, my right hon. Friend has found a way to get more contributions from those who can afford more.
The hon. Member for Sowerby gave many examples from the graduated scheme. He must know that those of us who have studied this question of pensions could do exactly the same from "National Superannuation." He said that "National Superannuation" blazed a trail. Well, the fire went out a long time ago. Nobody believes it now. In all these years that we have had it on the market—the Socialist pension scheme blazing the trail—I have never seen a copy of it being read in a library or on a railway train. I have seen many people reading "Lady Chatterley's Lover," and other "classical" literature, but I have never seen anybody with a copy of "National Superannuation".
I sometimes wonder whether I am the only hon. Member who has read it completely. I am not surprised that the Opposition have not read a good deal of it, because on the front page it says:
If the old are enabled to spend more, the rest of us will have that much less to spend.


They say that, but they never mean it, because it is in the payment of these contributions, with all the increases which we have to impose, that we make ourselves poorer for the benefit of our retired people. The Government have never shrunk, and neither has the Minister, from doing that in a State where salaries and wages have been increasing.
We are told by the hon. Member for Sowerby that the expenses are high. There, again, in "National Superannuation" the sum estimated for launching the scheme was £16 million in the first year, growing to £50 million in twenty years. Therefore, of course, the same arguments can be levelled at both schemes. The Government's pension schemes, basic and graduated, are not puny schemes. They are a massive financial effort on the part of those who are working and earning to pay pensions which in these days we wish more appropriately to see our old people receive.
We were also told by the hon. Member for Sowerby that those who are now almost 65 will not get any increase over the next few months for the first contributions which they will make to the graduated scheme. They will not, it is true, but in a short time when they retire they will get the benefit of the increased pension of £4 12s. 6d.—increased a fortnight ago—and for which increase they will not have contributed during their working lives.
A few months ago my right hon. Friend gave figures of entitlement for contributions paid over the years from the commencement of the National Insurance Fund, and stated that for contributions from employer and employee they would have purchased a pension of 9s., whereas a pension of £4 12s. 6d. is being provided. I suppose that that is part of the fraud about which we hear so much—a pension of £4 12s. 6d. for contributions yielding a pension of 9s.
I want to give one simple illustration from the National Insurance Fund in the same way that the hon. Member for Sowerby and the hon. Member for Coat-bridge and Airdrie have given examples of the smaller pensions in the Government scheme. It is, of course, possible to pick out the good and the bad from all pension schemes. We are assailed in

"The Pensions Fraud" because we have left out the self-employed man. I want to tell hon. Members something so that they may understand exactly what Labour's "National Superannuation" would have done for the self-employed man.
Such a man with an income of £1,000 a year would have paid to my right hon. Friend 8 per cent. of his salary, that is, £80 per year. That is a long way removed from 6d. a week to the Prudential. If the man paid it from the age of 25 to the age of 65, he would pay £3,200. Here is a point which should interest the hon. Member for Coatbridge and Airdrie. If the man died at 64 and 11 months, his widow would receive just a small pension and his life savings would all be gone. Had he paid that £80 into a building society and received interest on it at the rate of 4 per cent. throughout the period, after forty years it would have produced him, at age 65, almost £8,000 in his own right. Under the Socialist superannuation scheme he would get a pension of £500 a year.
The alternative is to take £8,000 in cash. He could go to the insurance market and get a pension of £800 a year, guaranteed for ten years, so that the whole £8,000 would be paid to his family whether he lived or not. Do we want to see these massive deductions by the State from the wage packets of those working? That is why "National Superannuation" when it blazed the trail, became a damp squib. As was evidenced at the General Election, people are not daft these days. Hon. Members opposite forget that we have had fifty years' experience of social welfare, and that has included education.
People do not want the main part of their savings to be controlled by politicians, least of all by Socialist politicians. We do not expect pensions which are able to provide an investment yield. We do not get large profits for contributions made as members of a pension fund. One does not get large profits from the whole insurance market; one gets cover against death. The only investment yield to a member under the fund, whether Government or "National Superannuation", is simply the profit which comes because of the saving of tax, on the one hand, and the employers' contributions, on the other.
A pension fund, private, Socialist or Tory, is a long hard, laborious saving year by year for the happy old age of the workers. There are more profitable investments, as the hon. Member for Coventry, East (Mr. Crossman) once pointed out, open to all the families in our land than under a Government scheme.
I apologise for not declaring, at the beginning of my speech, my interest in the insurance field. The reason was that I was carried away by the speech of the hon. Member for Coatbridge and Airdrie. I was extremely interested, because I like to hear his speeches, although it would be easier with an interpreter. However, I shall be able to understand more fully tomorrow what he said. As the Committee knows, I am engaged in the field of insurance, though not specifically with pensions. I am not a specialist in pensions at all. I am engaged rather more in the general field.
In "National Superannuation", in debates on pensions, and in their speeches, hon. Members opposite always assert that the Government have introduced this graduated scheme to fit in with the desires of the private insurance market. Nothing could be further from the truth. It hates the scheme, I received more protests from my insurance colleagues all over the country when the Measure for the graduated scheme came into being than from any other source, because once we go beyond the basic scheme we are entering the field which has hitherto been that of private insurance companies. They opposed the whole graduated scheme. We ought not to gibe at them, as is sometimes done in Opposition speeches and as is done in the Labour Party's booklet, because private insurance is one of the biggest and brightest gems in the whole of our commercial life.
Some years ago Sir Stafford Cripps paid a great tribute in the House to the insurance market for the way in which it administered, without profit, the whole war risk insurance scheme. He said that 70 per cent. of our premiums in the British market came from overseas. I think that the figure has now grown to 80 per cent. That means that 80 per cent. of me is paid for by the foreigners. As we provide only 50 per cent. of our own resources in raw materials for food

and clothes, I, as a member of the insurance business, am a very great profit to the country, especially as I came to this House for almost nothing into the bargain.
Why should we try to destroy this market? Irrespective of our party affiliations, it should be in the interests of both sides of the Committee to see this business, on its world scale, extended. It creates employment for hundreds of thousands of people, it makes profits at home and abroad and 80 per cent. of its profits are from overseas. We shall never beat the Russians to the moon, we cannot kill as many people in a few seconds as the Americans can, but, because of our initiative and our enterprise, we can insure people all over the world, and we shall continue to do so unless we impair the security of these great institutions.
It is a dreadful thing to make such a long speech in a short debate, but I now want to pay two tributes. One is to my right hon. Friend's permanent staff for the way in which they have issued about 15,000 certificates in a few months, which means that they have reviewed about 15,000 schemes. There have been no hitches, and it has been an interesting experience for me to take part in pensions debates in this House in helping to fashion the Bill, although I suppose that the hon. Member for Sowerby would say that I did not help very much in Committee.
However, we helped with our presence to fashion the Bill in Committee, and I have seen in my commercial experience the effects of our legislation. There have been many tributes from all sides to the work which the Ministry has done, which has been of tremendous value. It has involved increases in the pensions, the setting up a completely new Department, and this has been done without a hitch. I think that the only certificate which we have not had in my office is due to clerical mistakes of our own, and we cannot complain to the Registrar about that.
I want also to say how much the business community has helped, even if it has complained, and how much the life offices have helped to do this job, because it is a specialised field. Those of us who take part in these debates know how specialised and technical it is, and these people have rendered a


great service, much of which, I am glad to say—though we are in private business for profit—without thought of profit. We have been effecting changes to hundreds of schemes already in force, which has meant hundreds of meetings. I was at many meetings in canteens, and I can say that one can get a much better audience on pensions than one can on politics. All this great work has gone on.
I hope that we shall review some of the points which the hon. Member for Coatbridge and Airdrie was questioning about, and also review the administrative side of the scheme. I hope that, since the rush is now over, it might be possible for the Minister to have prepared a standard form of application for election to contract out. It has meant a lot of work in business in preparing this form, and perhaps a standard form in the shape of a certificate in a standard fashion, prepared according to the specifications of the Minister, could be handed to all those workers who are contracting out.
I think that my right hon. Friend has given figures of those contracting out. About half represent teachers, local government officers and civil servants. Nobody ever expected that this large group of 2 million people would go into any other pension scheme but their own. It is not because of criticism of the Government's scheme that these people have contracted out. After all, before this scheme started they were in the happy position of contributing themselves to a scheme which was to provide two-thirds of their working salaries on retirement, and I do not think that the teachers and all those involved in salary negotiations realise what a big advantage that is. When they come to retirement they find that their pension is based not on the contributions they have made throughout their years of service, but on the average salaries in the last three years, and that is why all these other schemes, without exception, prove to be insolvent.
We have the best example the country can look at to warn us away from the national superannuation scheme which recommends the upgrading of pensions according to wage increases, and so on, in the National Health Service employees. Last year, after five years, a quinquennial valuation took place, and that small scheme, aflecting only 300,000

employees, was found to be £80 million "in the red". My right hon. Friend the Minister of Health has contributed £40 million to the deficit. There is a warning there. Imagine that state of affairs for 23 million workers, when there is an £80 million deficit in respect of only 300,000 workers. It is a dangerous thing, and it can lead in itself to inflation.
I believe that the graduated scheme, for the first time in our pensions history, has at least attempted to cover all the problems with which my right hon. Friend was confronted. I am glad that the difficulties which everybody expected in regard to contracting out have not emerged. We were told that no other country in the world had been able to allow contracting out, and that we should fail. We have succeeeded, though almost 4½ million people have contracted out, which ought to give us great pleasure, because it means that 4½ million people are in schemes which are better than the Government scheme, and 2 million of them are in schemes which provide two-thirds of the salary on retirement, which is a very good thing. It also means that, from the figures we were given from the Government Actuary in an earlier debate, 6 million other people, mostly men, are in pensions schemes and have not contracted out, so that 6 million of our workers are in private schemes which are augmenting their Government pensions, which, again, is quite a good thing.
It is also the case that the graduated contributions are collected, but are not paid back. They are, in effect, going to those in retirement now, and I see no reason why those contracting-out into private schemes, which are, admittedly, better, should not pay a little more for the privilege, and, indeed, they are doing that. The man who paid 9s. 11d. before April now pays 11s. 4d., his employer's contribution has gone up from 8s. 3d. to 9s. 8d., a total of £1 1s., instead of 18s. 2d.—a 3s. increase with no benefit whatever to the man, except that he has contracted out and is a member of a first-class scheme.
Four million people are, therefore, paying 3s. per week more, which is 12 million shillings per week, or £600,000 per week collected by my right hon. Friend. In 52 weeks, that is over £31


million, and in ten years it is £310 million. That is why we cannot divide the graduated scheme from the basic scheme, and, therefore, I say that this £310 million is being taken out, as are the other contributions on the graduated scheme, to fulfil our obligations at this moment to our old people. We cannot separate the one from the other, and it is right, in my view, that the people who are contracted out should pay this extra.
I believe that this bargain—and it is a bargain—of membership of this National Insurance Fund at all ages is a good thing for the country. The life offices have shown that from £12 per week at all ages, there is nothing in the private sector of insurance that can touch the Government pension scheme, and, even at £15 a week at 50 and over, there is nothing in the private sector to touch the Government scheme.
This scheme is a bargain. There is no other country in which, for 9s. 9d. a week, a man can get a pension for both himself and his wife, children's allowances, a health scheme, maternity benefits for his wife, industrial injury benefits, sickness benefits, unemployment benefits, and so on. To assert that this scheme is a fraud can do only the gravest disservice to pensions generally and bring into disrepute those who make such statements.
I am certain that the right step has been taken. The scheme can add only strength to our pension arrangements for the future. It can bring only greater happiness to old people, and I congratulate my right hon. Friend on what he has achieved in the last year, and also on what he has done during his term of office at the Ministry of Pensions and National Insurance.

5.41 p.m.

Mr. Thomas Steele: I always listen with interest to the hon. Member for Bradford, West (Mr. Tiley). He brings to any meeting a sense of humour and a pleasant manner of speaking. His contribution this afternoon was much longer than his contribution during the Committee stage of the Bill, which lasted for a considerable time, although I recall one occasion when he did make a speech in the Committee. However, he is a Yorkshireman with a sense of humour, or whatever it

is called, and when he condescends to speak it is obvious that he has a good knowledge of his subject.
The hon. Gentleman started by being enthusiastic about the speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Coatbridge and Airdrie (Mr. Dempsey). He then went on to say that he had omitted to tell us about his financial interest in the matter. Having declared his interest, he advertised the insurance companies and said how much they had been against the introduction of this scheme. Will he tell us whether they are still against it?

Mr. Tiley: They are still opposed to it, largely because they fear a further encroachment on their activities. We, too, should fear that.

Mr. Steele: They are afraid of losing their profits; but they have benefited largely by the introduction of, first, the family allowances scheme, and, secondly, by the other things which have been done. The insurance companies have carefully examined what the Government have been prepared to do under the new scheme, and as far as I can see they are taking advantage of the scheme to provide new business for themselves.
The Parliamentary Secretary said nothing this afternoon about the operation of the new scheme. She failed to answer any of the questions asked by my hon. Friend the Member for Sowerby (Mr. Houghton). I think that the hon. Member for Bradford, West should thank his hon. Friend for giving to the Labour Party document the publicity which he thinks it deserves. He complained that nobody reads it while travelling in a train. I am surprised at that, because the Conservative Party have given more publicity to this document than we have.
The speech of the Parliamentary Secretary was shocking. During the Committee stage of the Bill we discussed the many administrative and other problems which might arise from the introduction of the new scheme, yet this afternoon the right hon. Lady said nothing about those problems. She said nothing about what has happened as offshoots to bringing in the scheme. Her speech was confined to trying to pour cold water on the scheme proposed by the Labour Party. We are not discussing that this afternoon, and I think that the right hon. Lady ought to have


told us something about the effects of this scheme.
In Committee, we were told that it was expected that about 2 million people would be contracted out. We now learn that 4½ million people have been contracted out. Is that figure correct?

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: The figure is 4¼ million.

Mr. Ross: The figure is 4,275,000.

Mr. Steele: The hon. Member for Bradford, West thought that because 4¼ million people had been contracted out it was a credit to the scheme. I take the opposite view. It shows clearly that what we said during the Committee stage of the Bill has been borne out by results.
What has happened is that local authorities, nationalised industries, and public enterprise have recognised that if a person is earning £12 10s. a week and over it is better for him not be be in the Government scheme, but if he is earning less it is. Instead of a firm or company contracting out all its employees, it is contracting out those who earn £12 10s. a week and over, and keeping in those who earn less. That is what local authorities in Scotland have been doing, even with the salaried workers.
What has all this meant? The new scheme has given rise to many administrative problems. When I have discussed this question with the financial staffs of local authorities, I have found them to be completely at sea about how the scheme will be worked. We will soon be discussing Regulations, which, I understand, will be prayed against, in connection with the modification of local authority superannuation schemes for teachers and other people. I believe that the complexities of the scheme are impossible to understand.
Those are some of the offshoots of the introduction of the new scheme. It is easy to argue that we have to take the flat-rate scheme with the graduated scheme. It is also easy to argue that they should be taken separately. However, the Government have decided that they should be separate schemes. If there were only one scheme, it would be unnecessary to contract people out. The Government have separated the schemes by saying that one group of people can

be contracted in, whereas another group of people can be in the flat-rate scheme and be contracted out. It is nonsense to suggest that we are the only people who are arguing that there are two separate schemes. It is because the insurance companies and the local authorities have recognised that anyone earning £12 10s. a week or more can get a better bargain outside the scheme, that 4¼ million people have contracted out.
I know of one firm which is giving its employees an individual option by which, with a small contribution per week, which is made up by the employer, the employee is able to make a better bargain. Throughout the proceedings on the Bill as it passed through the House we made it clear that those earning above £12 10s. a week would not be getting a good bargain from the Government's scheme and that their contributions would be used to subsidise not merely the pensions of those who would benefit under the scheme, but the increased pensions which the old people would be receiving.
I am disappointed that the Parliamentary Secretary did not devote some time to the problems which are being encountered. We discussed the problems of contracting out, and the Act lays down conditions for contracting out. We would like to know what has happened and what kind of provisions have been made and how the various superannuation schemes are meeting their problems. Those people who pay superannuation are interested in these matters and we would have like some information about them.
I know of no superannuation fund in the country which is quite like that of the miners, which is rather odd.

Miss Hornsby-Smith: I quite agree.

Mr. Steele: If the Parliamentary Secretary intends to use that as an example, and is to say that that is something that the Government should do in that form, she would meet the argument of my hon. Friend the Member for Coatbridge and Airdrie. The Government, through the National Coal Board, as the employers would be making a larger contribution and on that basis it would be a very good bargain for the miners indeed, although very odd.
I hope that the Minister himself will give us more information about what is happening administratively, what the staff have had to do, what differences the scheme has made, the actual administrative cost, the effect on industry, and problems connected with payrolls and with the method of collecting contributions. This is a new method of financing pensions and we would like to know exactly what has happened and how the scheme has worked out. If we could have information of that kind, we would be very grateful. We do not want to know about what happened ten or twenty years ago.

5.55 p.m.

Mr. Philip Holland: The hon. Member for Dunbartonshire, West (Mr. Steele) complained of attacks which were made on his party's scheme by my right hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary and my hon. Friend the Member for Bradford, West (Mr. Tiley). He will applaud my attitude when I tell him that I shall not refer to it, preferring to ignore it. He will not expect me to stand in for my right hon. Friend and answer his many questions, and I hope that he will forgive me if I address myself to the comments which I want to make.
It is right and proper that each of us should accept a measure of responsibility for providing for our own retirement, so far as we can reasonably afford to do so. The true function of the Welfare State is to bridge the gap between what most ordinary people can afford and their minimum social welfare and personal retirement. Such a concept in no way lowers the nation's morale by weakening self-reliance and encouraging fecklessness. Quite the contrary. Emphasis on the need to recognise personal responsibilities is an important feature of our current National Insurance scheme. It has been underlined by the introduction of a system of graduated contributions.
The State bears responsibility for the social needs of the community on a sliding scale which works in inverse ratio to that of Income Tax. In this context, possibly the most attractive feature of the whole scheme—basic and graduated combined—is that it allows the Exchequer grant to be concentrated on the people

with most need and, at the same time, as is equally important, it enables people spending the maximum period of time at the higher rate of income to provide virtually entirely for their own retirement.
Nevertheless, having said that, those who earn more than £15 a week for the whole of their working lives, while paying nearly the amount which they would have to pay to a private insurance company to obtain the same sort of retirement benefit, are still getting a very good bargain with the cover for sickness and unemployment and the other benefits which my hon. Friend the Member for Bradford, West mentioned. Many of the additional benefits are far better than could be afforded in private schemes and far better than those which other countries provide in similar schemes. In West Germany, for example, the contributions for unemployment and sickness benefit alone cost 15s. a week for the £15-a-week man, and to that has to be added the contribution of 21s. which he has to pay towards his pension. It is a bigger pension than ours, but he has to pay a bigger contribution and in all if is not as good a bargain as our scheme.
I want to turn from the general to one or two particular aspects of the scheme, those which appeal to me and those which I regret. I will deal, first, with those which appeal to me, because, like the scorpion, I like to keep the sting in the tail. For personal reasons which are already known to the Committee, I take a particular interest in welfare provisions for the bereaved—for the widows. When I first looked at the graduated part of the scheme, and on the emphasis placed on the fact that benefits are essentially personal to the contributor and not transferable, I foresaw serious disagreement between my right hon. Friend and myself.
I now extend an apology to my right hon. Friend for my initial lack of confidence in his humanity. I soon discovered that the personal principle did not apply in the case of widows. It is a commendable feature of the graduated part of the scheme that, on reaching retirement age, a widow becomes entitled not only to half the graduated benefits which her husband was drawing at the time of his death, but, if he had died before reaching retirement age, when she reaches retirement age she becomes entitled to half the graduated benefits which


her late husband's contributions had earned, even though he had not survived to qualify for them himself. It is just that sort of provision, allied to the general principle which I have already postulated, which commends the scheme to me and assures my right hon. Friend of my support this evening, in spite of slight misgivings to which I now turn.
While approving the scheme generally, I regret that in an average working week—and I am choosing my words carefully—the graduated part of the scheme applies to only about half of the working population. For the benefit of the mathematicians present, let me add that I have reached that conclusion by adding together the estimated 6 million people, who, in an average week, receive £9 a week or less; the 4¼ million people who, I am glad to note, unlike the hon. Member for Dunbartonshire, West, have already been contracted out, so that more than one-sixth of our working population, while not necessarily getting a better bargain, will receive a pension larger than that for which the new scheme provides; the 1,390,000 self-employed, and the 300,000 non-employed.
I would like some provision to be made for some of those in the first category, the 6 million, so that they could participate a little more in the graduated part of the scheme, and, also, so that all those in the third category could do so rather more. In an average week, an estimated 6 million people earn less than £9 a week and, therefore, cannot contribute in that week to an increase in their basic pension. But it is by no means the same 6 million who are not eligible every week. The incomes of many of them are subject to variation and the variation may be due to a drop from normal earnings through sickness or unemployment for a few weeks, after which they may go back to normal earnings; or they may be earning a salary and commission or bonuses varying week by week.
It is by no means rare for employees, whose incomes in some weeks may be below £9, in other weeks to earn more than £15. It is unfortunate that under the present collection arrangements such people are not allowed to balance a week in excess of £15 against a week below £9 for the purpose of calculating the graduated contributions. Clearly,

many such people could contribute for higher pensions if their weekly earnings were averaged out over the year, rather than taking each week in isolation, as under the present system.
The other category who could be more favourably suited in the scheme are the self-employed. I say "more favourably" because they are included in the scheme to the extent that they pay slightly increased contributions as from the beginning of April, but they are not allowed to participate in the graduated part of the scheme, although they get an increased basic pension. It is only a very small number of the self-employed who are top-hatted and cigar smoking plutocrats. The vast majority are shopkeepers, manufacturers' agents, commercial travellers on commission only, and many other people of that kind.
Large numbers of them are quite unable to afford to take on the commitment of providing privately for pension requirements in addition to the State scheme, because to take out an entirely new pension involves larger initial contributions added to the amount being paid into the State scheme. I should have thought it not impossible to arrange some method of averaging weekly or monthly earnings to enable such people to make graduated contributions for a graduated pension increase and so increase their provision for their old age. There is certainly no difficulty in doing so when it comes to a tax assessment.
I am sure that my right hon. Friend has considered those possibilities, because I have great confidence in his thoroughness. I guess that he has probably decided that they are administratively impracticable. Nevertheless, I ask him to look at them again and, in doing so, to recall the attitude of the Navy during the Second World War—"The difficult we can do at once; the impossible may take a little longer."

6.5 p.m.

Mr. William Ross: This has been a very short debate owing to the time available. I regret very much that the Joint Parliamentary Secretary, either through lack of judgment or calculation of some kind or other, completely misconstrued the purpose of the debate. I think she imagined that she was opening a Tory


sale of work somewhere. We got her usual rather aggressive, silly sort of speech, which we enjoy on the right occasion. But this was not the occasion for it.
I shall require to address myself to some of the remarks she made nevertheless. It will be her fault, not mine, if the tone and temper of the debate suddenly change. I was glad to hear the speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Sowerby (Mr. Houghton), to whom we always listen with considerable interest because he has knowledge. It was interesting to notice that in addressing himself to the graduated scheme he expressed some of the same fears about it as did the hon. Member for Acton (Mr. Holland). I think he made a splendid speech in relation to what we are discussing.
Let us appreciate the scheme which has started. We had long debates and discussions in Committee upstairs. I did not have the privilege of being a member of that Committee and my interest in this aspect of Parliamentary life began only a few months ago, but I have taken the trouble to read those debates. There followed Report and the eventual Third Reading. When we came to Third Reading, the Minister announced that we were starting a new and historic epoch-making scheme. I am sure that the speech of the Joint Parliamentary Secretary was not worthy of the occasion, embarking on the first Ministerial speech on the subject that her own Minister declared was "historic and epoch-making."
If the right hon. Lady had addressed herself to some of the pledges made by the Minister on Third Reading, that he was determined to get the thing into operation as soon as possible and was going to do all in his power to ease the complexities and difficulties which would arise, it would have been better. Never has any scheme come into operation having to get over so many hurdles as this one. I thought that we might at least have got from the Joint Parliamentary Secretary some indication of the work which has been done by her Department and that she might pay a meed of tribute to that.
What must it have been like for the Minister, in relation to a scheme prepared two years ago to come into force

in the month of April, to discover that as soon as the Department got out all the booklets, leaflets, pamphlets and explanations, something else happened on the Parliamentary scene which put them out of date. As my hon. Friend was speaking I was doing some scribbling. A couple of lines ran through my mind and, with the help of our Deputy Chief Whip, I wrote:
Leaflets by the million, booklets by the score,
Pouring through the letter-box, littering the floor,
Most of them were useless, some of them came late,
All the first edition was already out of date.
Not only is the first edition out of date, but within two or three weeks the second edition will be out of date.
This sounds like the speech which the right hon. Gentleman delivered on Third Reading. Here was the man who was going to make things easy. He was the man who introduced new rules which further confused the issue. Before 1st April people were paying 9s. 11d. and the Tory Party, having proclaimed that it would be only 8s. 4d. when the scheme started, suddenly came with a new Bill putting it up to 9s. 9d. So we have three lots of figures. All the people were paying 9s. 11d. and were promised that they would pay 8s. 4d. Then, from 1st April, they found they had to pay 9s. 9d. It did not end there. They reckoned without the Minister of Health who, with the help of the Minister of Pensions and National Insurance, put on another 10d. So the present amount of 9s. 9d. has to go up to 10s. 7d. in three or four weeks' time, at the beginning of July for those in the scheme.
Even a booklet which I got this morning, which I presume is a new issue because it is dated April, contains tables which will be of service to anyone only for three or four weeks. Could we be told by the Minister exactly how much all this has cost? This question was asked by my hon. Friend and we are entitled to an answer. All this must have led to a considerable amount of waste, chaos and muddle.
I can well appreciate the feelings of the right hon. Gentleman. We reckon him to be one of the most efficient Ministers, administratively, and I personally consider him one of the most efficient Parliamentarians. I can well appreciate how he felt when after all


this chaos the Chancellor of the Exchequer came along with the suggestion that there should be a pay-roll tax and that it was going to be carried on that overworked bit of paper, the National Insurance stamp. It was stated in the Sunday Express that the right hon. Gentleman kicked up his heels and said "No" to that one. Why did he not resign? The cold Parliamentary winds which have blown down on the Government from the North have killed the pay-roll tax.

Mr. Tiley: Not from Yorkshire.

Mr. Ross: The Government just saved their deposit in an industrial city and got 5,000 votes out of 40,000. That gets us to a point where the Government should stop and think. Does not the right hon. Gentleman see what is happening to his Department? It is a great social Department of State which is becoming purely and simply a tool of the Treasury. He is becoming a tax gatherer. Everyone is trying to get into the act, or on to the National Insurance stamp—the Minister of Health with his National Health Service contributions and the Chancellor with his pay-roll tax. I have no doubt that when the right hon. Gentleman protested he was told that it was a quid pro quo or a couple of hundred million quid pro quos because the Treasury is gathering the money for this graduated contribution.
It is serious when we consider how this tremendously elaborate machinery has been built up. We used to have lectures from the right hon. Gentleman when he sat on this side of the Committee, not always at a quarter past six in the evening, but usually at about quarter past six in the morning. I can remember him talking of a vast flood of ill-digested delegated legislation which flowed from the Departments of State and menaced the whole principle of democracy.
Look at the "vast flood". Look at the present list of Statutory Instruments issued on 22nd April. I am sure that the right hon. Gentleman is delighted to know that he has now become "Statutory Delegated Legislator No. 1" stemming from his National Insurance Bill. It is a proud position which, I am sure, he never thought that he would achieve or, having achieved it, that he would be proud of it. There are enough Statutory Instruments relating to what

we are discussing today with changes and modifications of superannuation schemes relating to firemen, teachers, local government servants and the rest—if we decided that we could discuss them all—to take every available day for the next five weeks. The poor Scots would not get a look in with the Statutory Instruments relating to betting and gaming.
Although the right hon. Gentleman has become king of the Statutory Instruments, he is not alone. There are plenty of others. All this has been happening at a time when Parliament has been concerned with other Parliamentary interventions which have followed this scheme. There has been his National Insurance Bill and, following that, the National Health Service Bills. Parliament has been at full stretch. These complications arising directly from the graduated scheme have not received proper attention from the House.
Then we have the kind of speech which we had from the Joint Parliamentary Secretary today. Such drivel. She shows me "The Pensions Fraud". She complained about having to scrape the bottom of the barrel to find the most difficult and unfair comparisons in relation to what someone was to pay and what someone would get. She did not need to look at "The Pensions Fraud" but only at a Ministry publication which came out last week. Look at page 31 giving examples of future retirements pensions. All that she said to my hon Friend about a man not getting any promotion and this, that and the other is the same here.

Miss Hornsby-Smith: The hon. Member says it is a fraud.

Mr. Ross: I have not mentioned the word "fraud" yet except when quoting the title of the pamphlet. I leave people to judge for themselves. A man who at the age of 25 in April, 1961, has forty years' working life at £10 a week will eventually achieve an increase in pension of 6s. 6d. I am not saying that it is a fraud. I am reading from page 31 of "Everybody's Guide to National Insurance", which is an official publication and well worth the 9d. asked for it. The only thing which is obscure about it is the foreword by the right hon. Gentleman. I shall come to that later.
Take another instance. People of 25 years of age are not terribly interested in retirement pensions, but people of 40 show a certain interest. A man of 40 on £12 a week is to pay 2s. 8d. for twenty-five years week after week and has already started to pay. He asks himself what he will get and the answer is, an additional pension of 11s. 6d. A man of 55 who has £14 a week is to pay at the rate of about 4s. 9d. or 4s. 10d., and his pension in ten years will be increased by 7s. 6d. I am not saying that it is a fraud. I am not saying that it is a swindle. I ask people to judge by what they are paying and what they will get. That is how people will judge it.
Let us appreciate that this is not the end. The right hon. Lady made some play about people receiving a higher pension and paying less. With all due respect to her, that was a twist, and she knew it. She knows that the original scheme enacted in 1959 laid it down that a lower-paid worker paid 8s. 4d. a week for the then pension. She equally knows that the Government introduced an Act to increase contributions this year. The increased contributions were not related actuarially to what was required to meet the future cost. They were increased, as they have been increased since 1954—we have only to read the Report of the Government Actuary to prove it—so that the lower-paid worker paid exactly the same as the higher-paid worker; he paid 1s. 5d. a week more.
In the same way, when we came to the increased National Health Service contribution the lower-paid worker paid 10d. more, as did the higher-paid worker. There was no differentiation. Indeed, the only differentiation is the 1s. 7d. written into the original scheme. That differentiation has been carried forward in the spring-heel increases which we will have over five-year periods. These increases, which are written into the Act, are related to existing pension and pension rates.
I hope that the right hon. Gentleman remembers his speech on Third Reading, when he said,
there is to be a reduction…in the contribution of these people for at any rate twenty years.

He was referring to the lower-paid workers—those paying 8s. 4d. He continued,
and at the end of twenty years the increase would be only 1d."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 9th June, 1959; Vol. 606, c.936.]
Let me tell him what happened in the first week of July, which is not twenty years after the scheme started.

Mr. E. G. Willis: It is not twenty weeks.

Mr. Ross: It is about three months. The contribution will then be 9s. 9d. plus 10d.—10s. 7d.; that is, 2s. 3d. more than the figure when the right hon. Gentleman made his speech. If he wants to work in the twist about which the right hon. Lady spoke, it will be 8d. more than the man was paying before the scheme started. It is about time the Minister started eating some of the words of his Third Reading speech both in relation to the ease of administration and in relation to the effect upon the lower-paid worker in the graduated scheme.
It is obvious from what happened about the last increase and the increase in the National Health Service contribution that in future any increases in contributions to the flat-rate pension will be on the basis of a poll tax. I was surprised that the hon. Member for Bradford, West (Mr. Tiley) suggested that we had got away from the poll tax. He knows that we did not get away from it in the last pensions increase or in the increase in the National Health Service contributions. The only difference between the fiat-rate contribution in relation to the contracted-in and the contracted-out is that written into the Act. From the Government's actions it is clear that we are to continue with this process. I am surprised that hon. Members opposite, many of whom have been concerned about the poll tax aspect, have swallowed it.

Mr. Tiley: The whole basis of the argument being used is that wages will be stationary for the next twenty years. They will not be stationary.

Mr. Ross: That is quite irrelevant. The graduated tax will be stationary. The £9 and £15-a-week aspect of wages is written into the scheme. The figures which I have quoted and the calculations which I have made, and those which the Department have made, are


quite accurate. I hope that the hon. Member appreciates the point of his own remarks. If these pensions of 6s. 6d., 7s. 6d. and 2s. for people, at the ages which I gave, look pretty insignificant now, how will they look in relation to the wage increases which we hope will take place with the passing of the years? This scheme is trivial and will become more and more trivial as the years pass and more and more irrelevant as an attack on poverty and old age. That is the basis of our attack upon the scheme, and it was the basis throughout the debates in the House. We complain of its total inadequacy. I agree with the right hon. Gentleman, and we all agree in the Labour Party, that people are prepared to pay for their pensions. It is a question of how they pay.
The right hon. Lady also commented on how wonderful the Government had been about the deficit. She should appreciate that it was no surprise to anybody that there was a growing deficit in the National Insurance Fund and that it had to be met by supplements from the Exchequer. I do not know whether she was interested in pensions on 13th November, 1957, when the right hon. Gentleman, occupying the same office as he occupies now, talked at that Dispatch Box about the burden of £357 million which had to be met by the Exchequer in 1964–65. He said,
Though we think that it is right that the country should assume the burden, it is a profund mistake to under-rate the magnitude of the liabilities which the…taxpayers are assuming."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 13th Nov., 1957; Vol. 577, c.976.]
This was a liability known and accepted by the Conservative Government. It was the emerging deficit. Does anyone suggest that, because it was met by general taxation, somehow or other that was wrong? Is it suggested that the State flat-rate pension scheme would collapse? Anyone who says that means that the credit of the country would collapse. Here we had a scheme which required, and is known to require, additional supplement from the national Exchequer. That has been accepted by the Government, and the contributions are tripartite—from the contributor, the employer and the Government.
Then we have an Act of Parliament which divides the employees into two groups—contracted in and contracted out. One part of the Act reduces the

amount of money which will be levied from one of these groups—the contracted-in group. If that is all that we do, what will happen? The deficit will rise and there will be a greater call on the Exchequer.
But of course the Government scheme did not end there. They introduced a new graduated contribution and, as a result of it, and as a result of the increases which are built into the Act in relation to existing rights, the Exchequer liability disappeared. What does that mean? It means that instead of it being borne by the general taxpayer this accepted liability is being borne by certain people who pay the graduated contribution. That is the simple point It is as simple as J.B.C.
If we present this to the people of the country as a graduated pension scheme and tell them that it is an attack on poverty and old age, in face of the fact that what they are paying for this graduated scheme is out of all proportion to what they will get out of it, how will they regard it? Will they regard it as a sham, as a fraud, as a swindle? I leave the people to judge. When people appreciate this year that according to the Actuary's Report a sum of £202 million is to go to meet the deficit, what will they think? Of course, the Report will soon be out of date, because we now have the estimate of the number of people who have contracted out. I have shown that this amount of money is to go to pay for the deficit. It will be spent to meet the emerging liability.
I congratulate whoever is responsible for the printing, lay-out and work of the Ministry's pamphlet to which I have referred, but I do not congratulate the right hon. Gentleman on his foreword in which he said,
April, 1961 marks the introduction of two important changes in national insurance.
It will be observed that it is no longer historic; it is just "important". He continues,
For the first time retirement pensions—and so contributions"—
he mentions contributions as an afterthought—
will bear a relation to an employee's earnings".
With all due respect to him, it is the contributions which bear the relationship to the earnings. The retirement pension


bears little or no relationship. It is a poor relationship—a very tenuous relationship. The right hon. Gentleman continues:
This system is inevitably a rather complicated one. It couldn't otherwise be fair as between people whose circumstances vary so much.
The point is that it is not fair. It is not fair to take what has been accepted as a national responsibility, to place it upon a group of people and to leave them to bear it in this way. The Government have transferred a financial burden from one form of taxation to another, from a fair system of taxation to one which is relatively unjust. To pass this on to the public as graduated insurance is to deny the whole meaning of words.
The right hon. Gentleman has been far too long at his present post. I think that he is becoming soured by political events. He has seen people less able than he, political nonentities and not very good brief-readers, edge him away from a seat in the Cabinet.
If the right hon. Gentleman remembers his Third Reading speech, he will recall that he concluded with a Latin tag and gave his own version of it. There is another translation of that that I would venture to give. I do not seek to do it in the Latin, although I could do that with reasonable facility. My version would be "He whom the gods wish to destroy or frustrate politically, they first make Ministers of Pensions".

6.35 p.m.

The Minister of Pensions and National Insurance (Mr. John Boyd-Carpenter): This debate has been an almost classic example of the desire of Her Majesty's Opposition to have it both ways. The first stage is to embark, with all the resources of the Labour Party, on a campaign launched by the Chairman of the Labour Party in person—who, only the other day, denounced this scheme as a fraud, as a swindle, and used all the adjectives with which a Winchester education furnishes a man.
When we come to a place where these charges can be answered, there is an attempt to create a wholly different atmosphere. The hon. Member for Dunbartonshire, West (Mr. Steele)—to whom I hope I shall do no irreparable damage if I say that I thought he made much the best speech we have heard

from that side today—took my right hon. Friend to task, as did the hon. Member for Kilmarnock (Mr. Ross), for having ventured, among other things, to remind hon. Members opposite of their own very murky past in this matter.
Says the hon. Member for Dunbartonshire, West, "Oh, we would have far preferred to have heard the details of the introduction of the scheme, the administrative arrangements and so on." Both hon. Members worked themselves up into a quite impressive state of synthetic indignation against my right hon. Friend. The hon. Member for Kilmarnock threatened me with a Latin tag; I shall give him another. It is Volenti non fit injuria, which, I think, can be roughly translated as "Provoke a redhead and you've had it."
If the hon. Member for Dunbartonshire, West, really expects a right hon. Lady of such colour of hair as my right hon. Friend has the good fortune to have, to sit quietly by wishing to discuss the details of administration, the particular type of leaflets issued and the Orders made, when such terms as "scandal", and "fraud", and "cheating the public" are being used quite deliberately and calculatedly——

Mr. Willis: And correctly.

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: —I will deal with that—used deliberately, not only in speeches but in a special Labour Party document, I think that the hon. Gentleman mistakes the calibre and resiliency both of my right hon. Friend and of the Government as a whole.
In replying to this debate, I have to deal both with the Dr. Jekyll on the back benches and the Mr. Hyde on the Front Bench—which seems to me, if I may follow up the agreeable personal preferences made by the hon. Member for Kilmarnock, the particular habit of the Labour Party. If I am to deal with both, I think I shall start with Dr. Jekyll. I fully understand that the hon. Member for Dunbartonshire, West who, I know, has Departmental knowledge of the subject, is concerned and interested in how this scheme is developing, but I certainly join issue with him when he says that the number of people contracting out amounts to something of a reflection on the scheme itself.
I believe that that remark springs from a very real difference of approach and philosophy between his side of the Committee and mine. It seems to those of my way of thinking that the right use of compulsive power of the State is not to compel people who are doing things perfectly satisfactorily now, to change over and do those things through State machinery, but rather to use the compulsive power of the State to bring along others to the standard of those who are doing it now.
If we accept that philosophy, it is, as my right hon. Friend said, highly satisfactory that it has been demonstrated to an impartial Registrar—and I am grateful for the very proper compliments paid by both sides of the Committee to that officer for the way in which he has handled his extremely difficult job—that there are, at any rate, 4¼ million people in schemes that have come up to the quite austere standard required for the issue of the certificate of non-participation.
That is a good thing. I can well see that from the point of view of hon. Members opposite, who really want to see provision for old age made a State monopoly, it is no doubt an unsatisfactory state of affairs. And I believe that the contracting-out arrangements went through a great deal better—thanks to the devoted work put in—than anybody could have dared to hope some months ago. Every applicant whose application had been made up to a few days before 3rd April and to whom it was possible to grant a certificate—that is, where due notice had been given and the application was in order—received a certificate in time. That is an extraordinarily satisfactory thing from the point of view of administration—leaving aside, for the moment, the difference there is between the hon. Gentleman and myself on the general question of contracting out.
My hon. Friend the Member for Acton (Mr. Holland) made a most thoughtful and interesting speech, and asked for one or two comments from me. He said that he wanted to see more participation in the graduated scheme of the 6 million people who, in any one week, are not participating in it. My hon. Friend made it clear that he understood the significance of the term "in any one week". That total includes the sick, the unemployed—even

some on unpaid holiday—during that period.
It is here that we come to the point that my right hon. Friend rightly stressed—though it evoked the ire of hon. Gentlemen opposite—that among the most conspicuous beneficiaries from this scheme are precisely those people on £9 a week or less. It is because, under this scheme, we are able to concentrate the subsidy from the Exchequer far more efficiently and effectively than is possible in a universal flat-rate scheme upon those on the lower earnings that it has been possible to reach what is—whatever hon. Members opposite may say—the not inconsiderable achievement of seeing to it that people who, at the end of March, were paying on these earnings the flat-rate contributions now find themselves, while paying no more—indeed, paying 2d. less—eligible to receive the increased rate of pension, and other benefits that came into operation on that date. It is because of that characteristic of the graduated scheme of concentrating the subsidy on those who need it most that it has been possible to help those 6 million people in that extremely valuable way.
I take my hon. Friend's point about bonuses. I should like to be able to do more about it, but I think that he will agree with me, because I know that he has experience of these matters, that, at any rate in the earlier years of the scheme, it is essential, as far as one can, to try to simplify its administration. It is quite clear that a clear-cut principle of basing the contribution on the pay period—the week or the month, or whatever it may be—is really essential if we are to get this new departure from a flat-rate to a graduated basis properly under way. I give my hon. Friend the undertaking that I shall watch the scheme with his point very much in mind, and I assure him that it was not until after very careful consideration that I and those helping me decided that, at this stage at any rate, we could not meet the point.
I return to the hon. Member for Kilmarnock. I am not grateful to him for much, but I am grateful to him for his compliment about the leaflet and I am grateful to him—and this may surprise him more—for his quotations from it. He referred to a number of cases in


order to suggest that the pension earned was derisory. I took down one of his examples. A man of 40 earning £12 a week—this is the hon. Gentleman's quotation from the leaflet—and paying 2s. 8d. a week graduated contribution will, by the time he reaches 65, have paid something like £174 in graduated contributions
The average expectation of life of a man at 65 is 12 years. If he is a man with the average expectation of life he will enjoy for 12 years the additional pension of 11s. 6d. quoted by the hon. Gentleman. If the hon. Gentleman will tot that up, it amounts to £360. It is a little significant that the example which the hon. Gentleman, with all his ingenuity in debate, selected as a basis on which to condemn this scheme is that of a man putting in £174 and taking out £360—

Mr. George Lawson: Mr. George Lawson (Motherwell) rose—

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: For reasons that the hon. Gentleman knows, I cannot give way to him—

Mr. Lawson: Will the right hon. Gentleman give way—

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: I am afraid not. I have to reply—

The Deputy-Chairman (Major Sir William Anstruther-Gray): Order. Only one hon. or right hon. Gentleman can have the floor.

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: I have to reply, Sir William, to a number of speeches. I have undertaken to resume my seat by two minutes to seven, so the hon. Gentleman can, if he wishes, then seek to reduce my already exiguous salary—

Mr. Ross: But does not the employer in this case pay a matching contribution?

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: Of course the employer pays a matching contribution. The hon. Gentleman will not find the mathematics very difficult because, as he has already said, the matching contribution matches.
The hon. Member for Sowerby (Mr. Houghton) chose another example. He asked, "What about the people retiring in the next few years?" He said that

those people would have to contribute £3 15s.—there is a matching contribution, if the hon. Gentleman wants it—in order to get 6d. addition to the pension. Very well—let us face that £3 15s. They will then get—

Mr. Lawson: It is £15—£7 10s. matched.

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: If the hon. Gentleman, who has not taken part in the debate, will be good enough to let me develop my own argument he will appreciate that his hon. Friend knows, though he himself does not, that where—and this is where the £3 15s. came in—a person is half way to the value of a brick under the scheme he gets the full value of the brick, so that the figure of £3 15s. is right, and his own hon. Friend was right in quoting it. That person will therefore contribute £3 15s. and thereby earn 6d. a week additional pension. If he has an average expectation of life—that is, 12 years from age 65—he will get £15 12s., so, again, I do not think that the hon. Member for Sowerby was particularly happy in his choice of an example of what he thought was a bad part of the scheme.
The hon. Gentleman then objected to what he called the small scale of the scheme. There, I think, we really come up against one of those fundamental differences in the Committee. It is not our view that the State should monopolise provision for old age. It is not our view that it is the function of the State to compel, through State machinery, more than a modest provision. We believe that the exercise of the rights of the individual to decide whether he shall provide further for his old age and take advantage of all the opportunities which are offered—the various schemes that are available to people—is the proper way of dealing with this matter beyond the basic pension. I cannot meet the hon. Member in that, because we are in a state of fundamental disagreement.
Both the hon. Member for Sowerby and the hon. Member for Kilmarnock attacked the 1959 Act on the ground that, in their view, it transferred liability from the taxpayer to the contributor. My right hon. Friend the Joint Parliamentary Secretary made it clear that the Exchequer contribution this year is the highest that the Exchequer has ever


made to National Insurance—£189 million. I will not quote the figures used by my right hon. Friend, but the proportion of benefit expenditure represented by the value of the contributions is considerably less than it was either at the beginning of the scheme, or in the last year of office of right hon. and hon. Members opposite. Therefore, it is not fair to suggest that what we are doing is pushing an unfair burden on to the contributor.
All that was very well put by the hon. Member for Sowerby some time ago, when he said, on Third Reading of the Bill:
I am not complaining in the least that the Minister has felt it necessary, and has had the courage, to tackle what he believes to be, and what a great many other people have believed to be, a growing burden of taxation which might threaten the principle of benefits as of right, which would destroy the insurance principle to which a great many people attach importance."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 9th June, 1959; Vol. 606, c.863.]
The hon. Member was talking extremely good sense.
The question is—it is the only question when one analyses the matter—whether we have got the proportions quite right. I call in aid "National Superannuation", which states, on page 10:
Although the State should make its contribution towards financing them"—
that is to say, the benefits—
the main burden must be borne in the future, as in the past, by contributions from the employer and the employee.
Now, we come to the wild, exaggerated and ludicrous charges of swindle, fraud and so on, which hon. Members opposite have circulated outside but which they are not quite so keen to back up here in a place where they can be answered. They say that in the earlier years of the scheme, we shall collect large sums of money and pay out very little by way of graduated benefits. That is perfectly true. It is true always of any new scheme. It was true of "National Superannuation", which—my right hon. Friend quoted the figures—after 10 years would have collected over £4,000 million and be paying out £37 million a year.
Hon. Members opposite must not be sensitive when I refer to "National Superannuation." I agree that one is probably discussing the dead and should

deal with it delicately, but when it is said that because one is doing things of this kind one is guilty of fraud, dishonesty and all the rest, it is relevant to note that something very similar was proposed by right hon. and hon. Members opposite. That does not establish that it is right; but it raises doubt as to the sincerity of the criticism. That is why my right hon. Friend was absolutely right to raise the question.
The matter was summed up by the hon. Member for Sowerby in Socialist Commentary for April, in which he said:
Is it a 'swindle'? Quite honestly, it all depends upon whether we look at the scheme as a whole, or whether we look at the graduated scheme by itself.
Of course, we must look at the scheme as a whole. There is nothing infamous, wrong or immoral about looking at what is, in the result, one pension as a whole. Looked at as a whole, there is no shadow of doubt that it give very good value for money to the contributor.
I ask the Committee to accept one figure for the current year. We shall spend on National Insurance benefits this year £1,134 million; we shall take in in contributions, flat-rate and graduated together, £937 million and the balance, bringing this up to a modest surplus, will be produced by the Exchequer contribution of £189 million plus £50 million interest on the invested balances of the funds.
It does not make sense to the ordinary man or to anybody else to suggest that an elaborate swindle is being perpetrated in a scheme which pays out—and this pattern will continue right through the future—something like £200 million a year more than is paid in. Therefore, it is quite wrong for hon. Members opposite to adopt this argument.
It is possible for hon. Members opposite to take examples favourable to themselves, although some of those quoted have not always turned out to be quite as favourable as hon. Members thought when they used them. Our scheme, however, does give more proportionate aid to some people than to others. It concentrates the benefit from the Exchequer upon those with lower earnings and also in considerable measure upon those nearing retirement. I would have said that it was no criticism of a subsidised scheme that it


concentrated its biggest benefits upon the poor and upon the old. That is precisely what this scheme does.
I am under no illusions—nobody introducing a complex scheme of this sort could be—that its introduction will other than involve difficulties. I do not pretend it is perfect. I undertake to watch its development and, if things go wrong, to put them right. But on the facts as they have been brought out in this debate and elsewhere, we can claim that by restoring the solvency of National Insurance, by so enabling a real advance to be made in the value of

present benefits for present pensioners and by, at the same time, bringing into operation a scheme which enables help to be given most to those who most need it, we at least have done some service to the millions whom it is our duty to serve.

Mr. Houghton: In view of the unsatisfactory nature of the Minister's reply, I beg to move, That item Class X, Vote 2 (Ministry of Pensions and National Insurance), be reduced by £5.

Question put:—

The Committee divided: Ayes 146, Noes 232.

Division No. 150.]
AYES
[6.58 p.m.


Ainsley, William
Hamilton, William (West Fife)
Probert, Arthur


Allaun, Frank (Salford, E.)
Hannan, William
Proctor, W. T.


Allen, Scholefield (Crewe)
Hart, Mrs. Judith
Randall, Harry


Bacon, Miss Alice
Healey, Denis
Rankin, John


Benson, Sir George
Herbison, Miss Margaret
Reid, William


Blackburn, F.
Holt, Arthur
Roberts, Goronwy (Caernarvon)


Bowden, Herbert W. (Leics, S. W.)
Houghton, Douglas
Robertson, J. (Paisley)


Bowles, Frank
Howell, Charles A. (B'ham, Perry Bar)
Robinson, Kenneth (St. Pancras, N.)


Boyden, James
Howell, Denis (B'ham, Small Heath)
Ross, William


Butler, Mrs. Joyce (Wood Green)
Hughes, Emrys (S. Ayrshire)
Shinwell, Rt. Hon. E.


Castle, Mrs. Barbara
Hunter, A. E.
Silverman, Julius (Aston)


Chapman, Donald
Irving, Sydney (Dartford)
Silverman, Sydney (Nelson)


Chetwynd, George
Jay, Rt. Hon. Douglas
Skeffington, Arthur


Cliffe, Michael
Jeger, George
Slater, Joseph (Sedgefield)


Collick, Percy
Jenkins, Roy (Stechford)
Small, William


Corbet, Mrs. Freda
Jones, Dan (Burnley)
Sorensen, R. W.


Cronin, John
Kelley, Richard
Soskice, Rt. Hon. Sir Frank


Crosland, Anthony
Key, Rt. Hon. C. W.
Spriggs, Leslie


Cullen, Mrs. Alice
Lee, Frederick (Newton)
Steele, Thomas


Darling, George
Lee, Miss Jennie (Cannock)
Stonehouse, John


Davies, Harold (Leek)
Lever, L. M. (Ardwick)
Strauss, Rt. Hn. G. R. (Vauxhall)


Davies, Ifor (Gower)
Lewis, Arthur (West Ham, N.)
Stress, Dr. Barnett (Stoke-on-Trent, C.)


Davies, S. O. (Merthyr)
Mabon, Dr. J. Dickson
Swain, Thomas


Delargy, Hugh
McCann, John
Swingler, Stephen


Dempsey, James
MacColl, James
Sylvester, George


Diamond, John
McInnes, James
Taylor, John (West Lothian)


Dodds, Norman
McKay, John (Wallsend)
Thomson, G. M. (Dundee, E.)


Donnelly, Desmond
McLeavy, Frank
Wade, Donald


Driberg, Tom
MacMillan, Malcolm (Western Isles)
Warbey, William


Dugdale, Rt. Hon. John
MacPherson, Malcolm (Stirling)
Weitzman, David


Ede, Rt. Hon. C.
Manuel, A. C.
Wells, Percy (Faversham)


Edelman, Maurice
Mason, Roy
Wells, William (Walsall, N.)


Edwards, Robert (Bilston)
Mayhew, Christopher
White, Mrs. Eirene


Edwards, Walter (Stepney)
Mellish, R. J.
Whitlock, William


Evans, Albert
Mendelson, J. J.
Wigg, George


Fernyhough, E.
Milne Edward J.
Wilkins, W. A.


Finch, Harold
Mitchison, G. R.
Willey, Frederlok


Forman, J. C.
Moody, A. S.
Williams, Ll. (Abertillery)


Fraser, Thomas (Hamilton)
Moyle, Arthur
Williams, W. R. (Openshaw)


Gaitskell, Rt. Hon. Hugh
Noel-Baker, Rt. Hn. Philip (Derby, S.)
Williams, W. T. (Warrington)


Galpern, Sir Myer
Oliver, G. H.
Willis, E. G. (Edinburgh, E.)


George, Lady Megan Lloyd (Crmrthn)
Oswald, Thomas
Wilson, Rt. Hon. Harold (Huyton)


Ginsburg, David
Padley, W. E.
Woof, Robert


Gordon Walker, Rt. Hon. P. C.
Paget, R. T.
Wyatt, Woodrow


Griffiths, Rt. Hon. James (Llanelly)
Pannell, Charles (Leeds, W.)
Yates, Victor (Ladywood)


Griffiths, W. (Exchange)
Pargiter, G. A.
Zilliacus, K.


Grimond, J.
Parker, John



Gunter, Ray
Peart, Frederick
TELLERS FOR THE AYES:


Hale, Leslie (Oldham, W.)
Pentland, Norman
Mr. Lawson and Mr Redhead


Hall, Rt. Hn. Glenvil (Colne Valley)
Plummer, Sir Leslie





NOES


Agnew, Sir Peter
Ashton, Sir Hubert
Batsford, Brian


Aitken, W. T.
Atkins, Humphrey
Baxter, Sir Beverley (Southgate)


Allason, James
Barber, Anthony
Beamish, Col. Sir Tufton


Amery, Rt. Hon. Julian (Preston, N.)
Barlow, Sir John
Bell, Ronald


Arbuthnot, John
Barter, John
Bennett, Dr. Reginald (Gos &amp; Fhm)




Berkeley, Humphry
Hamilton, Michael (Wellingborough)
Nugent, Sir Richard


Bidgood, John C.
Hare, Rt. Hon. John
Orr, Capt. L. P. S.


Biggs-Davison, John
Harris, Frederic (Croydon, N. W.)
Orr-Ewing, C. Ian


Birch, Rt. Hon. Nigel
Harris, Reader (Heston)
Page, John (Harrow, West)


Bishop, F. P.
Harrison, Brian (Maldon)
Page, Graham (Crosby)


Bourne-Arton, A.
Harrison, Col. J. H. (Eye)
Pannell, Norman (Kirkdale)


Box, Donald
Harvey, Sir Arthur Vere (Macclesf'd)
Partridge, E.


Boyd-Carpenter, Rt. Hon. John
Harvey, John (Walthamstow, E.)
Pearson, Frank (Clitheroe)


Bromley-Davenport, Lt.-Col. Sir Walter
Harvie, Anderson, Miss
Pickthorn, Sir Kenneth


Brooman-White, R.
Hastings, Stephen
Pitt, Miss Edith


Browne, Percy (Torrington)
Hay, John
Pott, Percivall


Bryan, Paul
Heald, Rt. Hon. Sir Lionel
Powell, Rt. Hon. J. Enoch


Buck, Antony
Henderson-Stewart, Sir James
Price, David (Eastleigh)


Bullard, Denys
Hendry, Forbes
Profumo, Rt. Hon. John


Bullus, Wing Commander Eric
Hiley, Joseph
Pym, Francis


Burden, F. A.
Hill, Dr. Rt. Hon. Charles (Luton)
Rawlinson, Peter


Campbell, Sir David (Belfast, S.)
Hill, J. E. B. (S. Norfolk)
Redmayne, Rt. Hon. Martin


Campbell, Cordon (Moray &amp; Nairn)
Hinchingbrooke, Viscount
Rees, Hugh


Carr, Compton (Barons Court)
Hirst, Geoffrey
Rees-Davis, W. R.


Carr, Robert (Mitcham)
Hobson, John
Rippon, Geoffrey


Cary, Sir Robert
Hocking, Philip N.
Roberts, Sir Peter (Heeley)


Channon, H. P. G.
Holland, Philip
Robertson, Sir David


Chataway, Christopher
Hopkins, Alan
Roots, William


Clark, William (Nottingham, S.)
Hornsby-Smith, Rt. Hon. Patricia
Ropner, Col. Sir Leonard


Clarke, Brig, Terence (Portsmth, W.)
Howard, Hon. G. R. (St. Ives)
Royle, Anthony (Richmond, Surrey)


Cleaver, Leonard
Howard, John (Southampton, Test)
Seymour, Leslie


Cole, Norman
Hughes Hallett, Vice-Admiral John
Sharpies, Richard


Collard, Richard
Hughes-Young, Michael
Shaw, M.


Cooke, Robert
Hutchison, Michael Clark
Skeet, T. H. H.


Cooper, A. E.
Iremonger, T. L.
Smith, Dudley (Br'ntf'rd &amp; Chiswick)


Cooper-Key, Sir Neill
Irvine, Bryant Godman (Rye)
Smithers, Peter


Cordeaux, Lt.-Col. J. K.
Jackson, John
Smyth, Brig. Sir John (Norwood)


Corfield, F. V.
Jenkins, Robert (Dulwich)
Soames, Rt. Hon. Christopher


Costain, A. P.
Jennings, J. C.
Spearman, Sir Alexander


Coulson, J. M.
Johnson, Dr. Donald (Carlisle)
Steward, Harold (Stockport, S.)


Craddock, Sir Beresford
Johnson, Eric (Blackley)
Storey, Sir Samuel


Crowder, F. P.
Johnson Smith, Geoffrey
Studholme, Sir Henry


Cunningham, Knox
Jones, Rt. Hn. Aubrey (Hall Green)
Sumner, Donald (Orpington)


Curran, Charles
Kerans, Cdr. J. S.
Tapsell, Peter


Currie, G. B. H.
Kimball, Marcus
Taylor, Sir Charles (Eastbourne)


Dalkeith, Earl of
Kitson, Timothy
Teeling, William


Dance, James
Leavey, J. A.
Temple, John M.


d'Avigdor-Goldsmid, Sir Henry
Leburn, Gilmour
Thomas, Leslie (Canterbury)


Deedes, W. F.
Legge-Bourke, Sir Harry
Thorneycroft, Rt. Hon. Peter


de Ferranti, Basil
Lewis, Kenneth (Rutland)
Tiley, Arthur (Bradford, W.)


Digby, Simon Wingfield
Litchfield, Capt. John
Turner, Colin


Doughty, Charles
Lloyd, Rt. Hn. Geoffrey (Sut'nC'dfield)
Turton, Rt. Hon. R. H.


Drayson, G. B.
Longden, Gilbert
van Straubenzee, W. R.


du Cann, Edward
Loveys, Walter H.
Vaughan-Morgan, Sir John


Duncan, Sir James
Low, Rt. Hon. Sir Toby
Vickers, Miss Joan


Duthie, Sir William
Lucas, Sir Jocelyn
Vosper, Rt. Hon. Dennis


Elliot, Capt. Walter (Carshalton)
Lucas-Tooth, Sir Hugh
Wakefield, Edward (Derbyshire, W.)


Emery, Peter
McAdden, Stephen
Wakefield, Sir Wavell (St. M'lebone)


Farey-Jones, F. W.
MacArthur, Ian
Walder, David


Farr, John
McLaren, Martin
Walker, Peter


Fisher, Nigel
Maclean, SirFitzroy (Bute&amp;N.Ayrs.)
Walker-Smith, Rt, Hon. Sir Derek


Foster, John
Macleod, Rt. Hn. Iain (Enfield, W.)
Watkinson, Rt. Hon. Harold


Fraser. Hn. Hugh (Stafford &amp; Stone)
McMaster, Stanley R.
Watts, James


Fraser, Ian (Plymouth, Sutton)
Maddan, Martin
Wells, John (Maidstone)


Freeth, Denzil
Marlowe, Anthony
Whitelaw, William


Galbraith, Hon. T. G. D.
Marples, Rt. Hon. Ernest
Williams, Dudley (Exeter)


Gammans, Lady
Marshall, Douglas
Williams, Paul (Sunderland, S.)


Gardner, Edward
Matthews, Gordon (Meriden)
Wills, Sir Gerald (Bridgwater)


Glyn, Sir Richard (Dorset, N.)
Maxwell-Hyslop, R, J.
Wilson, Geoffrey (Truro)


Goodhart, Philip
Maydon, Lt.-Cmdr. S. L. C.
Wise, A. R.


Goodhew, Victor
Mills, Stratton
Wolrige-Gordon, Patrick


Grant, Rt. Hon. William
Montgomery, Fergus
Wood, Rt. Hon. Richard


Grant-Ferris, Wg Cdr. R.
Moore, Sir Thomas (Ayr)
Woodnutt, Mark


Green, Alan
More, Jasper (Ludlow)
Woollam, John


Gresham Cooke, R.
Morgan, William
Worsley, Marcus


Grimston, Sir Robert
Morrison, John
Yates, William (The Wrekin)


Grosvenor, Lt.-Col. R. G.
Mott-Radclyffe, Sir Charles



Gurden, Harold
Noble, Michael
TELLERS FOR THE NOES:




Mr. Finlay and Mr. Gibson-Watt.

It being after Seven o'clock The CHAIRMAN left the Chair, further Proceeding standing postponed until after the consideration of Private Business set down by direction of The CHAIRMAN OF WAYS AND MEANS under Standing Order No. 7 (Time for taking Private Business).

Mr. DEPUTY-SPEAKER resumed the Chair.

Orders of the Day — TRUNK PIPELINES BILL (By Order)

Order for Second Reading read.

Motion made, and Question proposed, That the Bill be now read a Second time.

7.8 p.m.

Mr. Grant-Ferris: I am grateful for having the opportunity to put the case for the promoters of the Bill. It has created a great deal of interest in the country, and I think on both sides of the House. It has aroused a certain amount of feeling one way and another about how these proposals should be developed to the best national advantage.
The Bill seeks to achieve Parliamentary permission to lay a pipeline 70 miles long between Canvey Island in the Thames and Denham in Bucks. In the main, the route of the pipeline follows the property of the British Transport Commission. It runs 21 miles along the towpaths of canals and seventeen or eighteen miles along railway property. About twenty miles of it is within an easement of the North Thames Gas Board. The property of the various parties that would be asked to give way-leaves covers an insignificant mileage.
I think that the House ought to be grateful to the promoters of the Bill for bringing it forward. It has galvanised the attention of my right hon. Friend the Minister of Power and of Parliament in general. It concerns a very important and urgent matter. I think that we can reasonably hope that when my right hon. Friend intervenes in the debate he will make a statement which will be reassuring to many people. It may be more reassuring to hon. Members on this side than to hon. Members opposite, but I do not think that even they will be too despondent about what he has to say. I feel that he is bound to say the sort of things that any Minister of the Crown must say about matters like this.
We are a little behind in this regard. America and the Continent already have in working order many hundreds of miles of pipelines such as those which we envisage. We shall have to take second place, but that may not be altogether a bad thing, because in planning our system we shall learn a great deal from them and we shall not, if I may borrow a phrase from one of my right hon. Friends which I thought was extremely apt, "land ourselves with a plate of spaghetti".
The difference between this Bill and the Esso Bill of last year is that this Bill seeks to be a multi-user Bill. In other words, what the promoters wish to have is a pipeline through which will pass all manner of liquids. They envisage, in the first place, to pass along the pipeline the liquids produced by the oil companies, and later, as other ideas develop, other materials. It has been said that it is possible to pass even such things as coal along pipelines of the type that we are discussing. We can, therefore, look forward to wonderful things in the use of these pipelines.
It would be as well to say a few words about the position of the British Transport Commission if the scheme which is envisaged should materialise. The promoters of the Bill have entered into negotiations with the British Transport Commission, as a result of which the Commission would get a share of the profits from the workings of the pipeline and, should leave be given later to extend the system a share of the profits resulting from the extension. I think that this is a much better idea than having a fixed royalty of so much for the right to use so many miles of railway, canal towpath or whatever it may be. It is obvious that these pipelines will be used a great deal and that there will, therefore, be a considerable and growing revenue for the railways and for the canals. Hon. Members know that I am not altogether disinterested in the last matter.
A survey has been carried out along the length of canal from London to Liverpool. If the pipeline were built it would undoubtedly be very beneficial to the revenues of the canals. In designing the pipeline the greatest care must be taken to save the amenities. I visualise that there may have to be a number of pipes going along certain tracks, as it


were, and, therefore, it might well be necessary to make a container within the towpath of a canal which would take as many as three, four, five or perhaps six lines. If that were done the container would have to be buried. It would, therefore, not be an eyesore.
The trouble about the Bill is that it is likely to cut across what might well be, and what ought to be, general Government policy. I believe that it is only right to say that the promoters of the Bill are well aware of this. I am authorised to say that if my right hon. Friend makes a statement which is acceptable to the House in general and to the pro moters, they are prepared to withdraw their Bill on the understanding that speedy Government action will be taken. Above all, we feel that whatever Govern-action is taken—

Mr. Hugh Delargy: Is the hon. Gentleman saying, on behalf of the promoters of the Bill, that if the Government undertake this contract they will withdraw the Bill?

Mr. Grant-Ferris: No. I have not finished explaining the position. If the Government undertake to study the matter quickly and to bring forward general legislation as quickly as possible—I mean legislation not for this particular pipeline but for the whole country—and provided there is within the format of that legislation a place for private enterprise to play its part, then the promoters would be willing cheerfully to withdraw the Bill.
I think that we owe a great debt of gratitude to the firm which has brought forward these proposals. A great deal of money has been involved—I understand about £70,000. This seems to be a large sum of money in the promotion of a Bill, but I assure the House that it includes the cost of the very careful survey which was made over the whole route of the proposed pipeline and over the route from London to Liverpool. The promoters had to spend the money to see whether they could lay the pipeline. They have found that they could. If the Bill is withdrawn they will have to pay the costs of bringing it forward. It is only right, therefore, that we should be grateful to them for bringing it forward and for galvanising us into action. It would be a good thing also if the oil companies generally should see what is being done

for them, because it is very much in their interests that this pipeline should be built.
Whether there will be pipelines devoted to a company's private use or whether there will be multi-user pipes such as is envisaged in the Bill are matters for debate in the future, but we should be grateful to the promoters of this Bill for what they have done. I feel that the debate will be a landmark in our history because we are about to embark upon something the application of which is bound to have far-reaching results in our national life. One of the small but, in my view, important things is that it will remove a great many lorries from our roads, with the resultant loss of all those dreadful fumes from which we suffer so much today. In addition, this development will be an important factor in contributing within the years remaining to the increasing, and indeed doubling, of our standard of life in twenty-five years of which the Leader of the House spoke some years ago.

Mr. Speaker: I think that it will be for the general convenience if I indicate that in due course I shall call the Amendment in the name of the hon. Member for Gloucestershire, South (Mr. Corfield) and others—the "six months" Amendment—and that the Amendment in the name of the hon. Member for Southwark (Mr. Gunter) and other hon. Members
That this House declines to give a Second Reading to a Bill which anticipates general public legislation and which makes no provision for the comprehensive and co-ordinated development of pipelines under public ownership and control.
is not selected.

7.22 p.m.

Mr. Ray Gunter: I am sure that many of us have heard with some relief the statement made by the hon. Member for Nantwich (Mr. Grant-Ferris) that in all probability the Bill will be withdrawn, because I rise to oppose its Second Reading. But I must agree with the hon. Member that we should feel thankful that the Government have been galvanised into some sort of action as a result of the Bill being presented.
It was on 6th March that the Minister announced that the Government had found it necessary to legislate to secure in the national interest the orderly development of privately-owned industrial


pipelines. I am surprised that the Government have waited this long before facing up to what may be a major development in the transport industry not only of this country but of the world. It appears that if we had not had the discussion on the Esso Petroleum Bill and the presentation of this Bill we should be still floundering about and lagging behind other countries in this respect.
I should have thought that over the past few years the Government would have been grappling with the problems and the social and economic consequences that may flow from a development of this kind. Whatever we are able to do in this country, and I am not expert enough to prophesy how rapidly this project will develop or to predict its magnitude, there are bound to be various effects. It has been considered in the past that the comparatively short distance for which traffic has to be carried and the rarity of upsets by weather conditions of our normal transport did not necessitate this development to the degree that has taken place in other countries. But it is the duty of all people engaged in industry, and particularly in the transport world, and it is emphatically the duty of the Government, to watch closely and learn as rapidly as they can the lessons that can be derived from the experiments which are now being conducted on a broad pattern in other countries.
It is interesting to read of the great development nowadays behind the Iron Curtain in this form of transport. I understand that there is in course of construction a great pipeline running from Baku on the Caspian right to Poland, Eastern Germany, Czechoslovakia and Hungary, and it is obvious from its length and the size of the refineries at the terminal points of this great pipeline that it is aimed at expansion westwards. Russian oil is already playing an important part in bilateral agreements. In the United States there is already a 110 miles long pipeline for the transport of coal. Experiments on a large scale have been conducted in the conveyance of such things as sugar, cement and flour, which are being increasingly carried in this country by tankers on the road but which we may yet see carried underground.
Although we are not quite sure, and I hope that the Minister will tell us more about the rate of development, I submit that there is urgency about ensuring that this form of transport is developed in an orderly and, I hope this time, an integrated fashion. There are obvious advantages about pipeline conveyance. It is cheap. I remember reading that to carry a 42-gallon drum of petrol from Philadelphia to New York costs 4s. and that it costs only 6d. by pipeline. We can therefore see the advantages that accrue in that respect, and such a development could do much to relieve congestion on our roads.
There are these advantages, but every page of transport history in this country shows that when we have a new form of transport there are inevitably great economic and social consequences. It is, therefore, very necessary and proper that enlightened legislation should be produced quickly to deal with this new form of transport that may—I put it no higher—develop at a rapid rate.
I beg the Minister to read and re-read the history and sometimes the tragedy of legislation affecting canals, railways and roads in the past in this country. I am not anxious to score any political point on this, but we all agree that the legislation that dealt with railways as they affected canals and the legislation that dealt with railways when they were hit by the roads was largely responsible for landing us in the mess and in the confused state that we find ourselves in the transport industry today. I do not want to be too harsh on our fathers, but at least let us produce legislation this time that will not repeat the mistakes of the past.
Here I enter into the field of politics. I am convinced that if action of this kind is left in the hands of private enterprise to develop we shall have the same mistakes. We must reject the Private Bill system, therefore, as being completely inadequate for dealing with this kind of thing. On this point I can do no better than quote the paper of the top people. The Times, which in a leading article on 7th March dealing with pipelines said:
The inadequacy of the Private Bill system is by now well-recognised. One of its weaknesses is that in some cases it does not give enough protection to owners of property affected, and it may well be questioned in any case whether private property rights should be overridden in favour of an unregulated private


profit-making enterprise. Local authorities are not sufficiently protected against longer-term inconveniences that they may suffer. Another weakness is still more fundamental—that only those directly affected by the proposed route of the pipeline may enter objections, and in consequence the choice of alternative routes cannot be properly considered in the light of the wider public and private interests involved. Nor, it seems, is there any means whereby the continuing obligations of this new form of transport can be satisfactorily laid down. The question of the specific weaknesses of the Private Bills procedure merges, in fact, with the wider question whether oil pipelines are not a public utility—not necessarily to be publicly owned but at any rate regulated as regards their powers and obligations by statute.
I think, therefore, that there can be no disagreement in the House that Private Bill procedure is not suitable for this purpose.
What, then, should we be looking for in the general legislation which the Government have undertaken to produce? If we accept that pipeline transport is to be a major factor in considering transport problems, if we have to revise our previous judgment that Britain was too small a country and too well-equipped with other forms of transport, because of the cheapness and speed of pipelines and the relief of road congestion, and the fact that they may well become capable of carrying many other products, fluid or solid, then we have to face the consequences of this major change in transport and its influence upon economic and social life.
We are deeply aware of the effects of railway and road development in this country. Let me repeat to the Minister that I would not be dogmatic or prophetic about the future of pipelines in this country, but I think that he should tell the House tonight what the opinions of the experts are about the trends, so far as they can be ascertained, in this direction over the next decade and their effects upon industry and upon our people.
One thing about which I am quite clear—and I am sure that I shall take the Minister with me on this—is that if this new means of transport is found to have beneficial results for British industry, then, for heaven's sake, we should not allow any doctrines or party politics or conservative thinking to stop its development. The more effective and cheap we can make our industry, the better it is for us.
I should like to submit to the House certain of my and my party's thoughts on what the policy should be. First, I would say that when the Government are considering this matter they should evolve a coherent plan for the country as a whole, so that the history of the canals and railways is not repeated. The other thing that I would emphasise, and I think that it was conceded by the hon. Member for Nantwich, is that there should be a provision that the lines should be for common use and not restricted to the products of private concerns owning the lines. In other words, in this development we should seek to ensure common-user rights.
I and my party believe that there should be public ownership of the lines from the start. They will be a source of revenue; their extent and location will effect the whole economy; their construction and management will require continual contact both with local and central government. Development of this kind is likely to affect railway revenues. It is likely to effect employment in that section of our industry, and to effect it adversely. There is an offset if the pipes are laid, as far as possible, along existing railway tracks or canals. In so far as the lines will diminish the value of one public asset, this, I submit, is an additional reason for their being publicly owned. As I have said, pipelines will affect our traffic on the roads, but, as we hope that the whole economy is expanding, there may be no threat to employment, and the mitigation of traffic congestion will be a tremendous advantage to us.
Since the first and most obvious use of pipelines is for oil—and this is a point which is worrying our friends in the coal industry—they may, by making the distribution of oil easier, become a further threat to the coal industry. Therefore, there is an urgent need for the Government to press on their researches to make this modern means of transport available for the conveyance of coal. In our thinking on policy for the future we have to consider how we should handle this situation which may affect many in the field of local government in town and country planning. A pipeline terminal—it has already been proved on the Continent—may well become a centre from which road traffic radiates, and in this and


other ways a great nuisance to those living in its neighbourhood. We know that some pipelines—to a limited extent, I hope—will have to pass over or under commons, or traverse places of national beauty, and we want to be sure that there will be no desecration of our countryside.
We also know the anxiety felt by many of our local authorities on this matter, because the construction and maintenance and repair of these lines will probably involve the taking up of highways. This aspect of the Bill has already alarmed certain local authorities and they have made representations to nearly all hon. Members. We must be quite sure that general legislation will lay it down that proper safety measures are enforced. I have no desire to detain the House longer, particularly in view of what has been said by the previous speaker, but I hope that the Minister will make as comprehensive a statement as he can upon the Government's intention and how they propose to deal with this emerging form of transport. I hope that we shall not be laggardly in using every means to learn from experiments abroad so that what we may contribute a great deal to the prosperity and well being of our people.

7.38 p.m.

Mr. John Arbuthnot: The number of hon. Members who are present in the Chamber this evening for a Private Bill shows the interest that is felt in this matter and reflects the interest felt throughout the country in the problem of how we should conduct our pipeline legislation. I do not think that there is any fundamental disagreement between any of us on this matter. My hon. Friend the Member for Nantwich (Mr. Grant-Ferris), in the attractive way in which he put the case for the promoters, made it quite clear that the promoters did not expect the Bill to receive a Second Reading tonight, and that what they want is an indication of what the Government have in mind regarding future legislation.
Whether the Bill is withdrawn or is refused a Second Reading does not really matter. What does matter is that the Bill in its present form should not go a further stage. I say that, not because I have any views about the merits of

what the promoters seek to achieve in the Bill; they may well be unexceptionable. The reasons why I think that the Bill should not be allowed to go any further is that Private Bills are not suitable for dealing with pipeline authorisation. It is on this aspect of the matter that I would seek to enlist the support of the House.
When the Esso Bill came before Parliament in the last Session, and it had much in common with this Bill, the House, instead of sending it to a Private Bill Committee, thought that the whole principle involved was of such importance that a Select Committee, on which I had the privilege of serving as Chairman, was set up to consider it. I should like to pay tribute to my colleagues on that Committee on both sides of the House, a number of whom are in the Chamber tonight, for their hard work and robust common sense.
Our Committee on the Esso Bill reported unanimously that we were convinced that Private Bill procedure was not the best way of safeguarding the interests of owners, lessees or occupiers when a pipeline is to be constructed. We recommended that no further Private Bills for the construction of pipelines should be passed by this House. We went on to say—because we wanted to be constructive—that we were attracted by the idea that such measures should be authorised by Provisional Order, and commended to the House for consideration that a public enquiry should be held before the Order was made, and that the Order itself should be affirmed by a Provisional Order Bill.
The reason for this is that not only are landowners and occupiers affected, but also people in the vicinity, whom we must not forget. It is not only those across whose land pipelines pass who may be affected, but others in the vicinity. Two objectors, for instance, to the Esso Bill, were brewery companies in the neighbourhood who drew water from the area for their beer. Some of those affected may wish the pipeline to take a different course.
The weakness of private Bill procedure is that a Committee on a Private Bill has no power to alter the route beyond the "limits of deviation" on the plans deposited with the Bill, since this might involve affecting people who would not


have had notice and been given an opportunity of objecting. The Committee on the Esso Bill was, therefore, compelled to report that it
had been unable to give the full protection offered by the Acquisition of Land (Authorisation Procedure) Act, 1946,
which involves a local inquiry, held by a Minister, at which objectors may make their case.
If there is to be a local inquiry, together with some form of Parliamentary control, as the Committee envisaged, that means that there are three possible forms of procedure open to us—Provisional Orders, Orders subject to special Parliamentary Procedure under the Statutory Orders (Special Procedure) Act, 1945, or Orders subject to affirmative resolution only.
The idea of local inquiries was supported by my right hon. Friend the Minister of Power, and I should like to take this opportunity of thanking him for the way in which he has kept me in close touch with his thoughts in the matter. In answer to a question which I put to him, he said that the Government proposed to legislate, and added:
The legislation will provide that, where there are objections by public bodies or private individuals to a project, those objections may be heard at a public inquiry and that, in appropriate cases, the Minister's decision will be subject to the approval of Parliament."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 6th March, 1961; Vol. 636. c.2.]
He subsequently defined "appropriate cases" as being
those where compulsory purchase orders are sought.
My right hon. Friend went on to say that before he laid detailed proposals before Parliament he would consult the various interests that would be affected. From this it would appear that what he has in mind is not Provisional Orders, which the Esso Bill Select Committee recommended, but special Parliamentary procedure, since all Provisional Orders are subject to the approval of Parliament, and not merely "appropriate cases."
It is because I feel that it is important that my right hon. Friend should get his legislation right in draft rather than, having drafted the legislation, find himself up against a number of us who are trying to protect the functions of Parliament and the rights of objectors,

that I am venturing to detain the House a little longer. I also want to alert the Association of Municipal Corporations, the Urban District Councils' Association and the Rural District Councils' Association, not to mention the Society of Parliamentary Agents, whom I have no doubt the Minister will be consulting. If their previous representations are anything to go by, I think that they will have views highly critical of special procedure.
It seems to me wholly inappropriate that legislation which was designed specifically to deal with what was described in the White Paper, Cmd. 6515, as the "Reconstruction Period" when a flood of reconstruction Orders was apparently expected, and when it was felt that these should not be obstructed by private interests, should now be applied to an entirely new field—namely, pipelines.
It is not as if Special Procedure Orders were generally acceptable. In April, 1959, on the Leicester (Amendment of Local Enactments) Order, 1959, debates took place in both Houses in which the working of the Act was adversely commented upon by Members on both sides. Special Procedure Orders have the effect, which I am sure my right hon. Friend does not intend, of avoiding the Parliamentary scrutiny of orders. I should be grateful if he would indicate what attracts him to Special Procedure Orders as against Provisional Order Bills, because there are some very serious defects in them. One of them is that, except for the handful of Special Procedure Orders where objection is raised, Parliamentary scrutiny is actually less than that given to Statutory Instruments subject to annulment.
This is because, in the first place, Special Procedure Orders are not referred to the Statutory Instruments Committee of the Commons and, in the second place, the time for their anulment by a Resolution of either House is only fourteen days compared with forty days for a Statutory Instrument.
My next objection to the use of the Special Procedure Order is that, unless a Petition is presented against the Order, it cannot be amended. Like a Statutory Instrument, it must either be approved or rejected as a whole. This means that settlements cannot be arrived at,


even when the promoters are agreeable and willing to make small alterations to meet people who would otherwise have to go to the expense of petitioning, unless the whole order is withdrawn.
It also means that drafting Amendments cannot be made. These are often very necessary, as has been shown with Unopposed Provisional Order Bills which have had the benefit of Government drafting. In the Second Reading debate on the Special Procedure Order Bill in another place, it was pointed out by Lord Mersey, who was acting Chairman of Committees, that, in a year taken at random, out of thirty-four Provisional Order Bills, fourteen were amended in one or both Houses. The lack of possibility of amendment seems particularly inappropriate to a pipelines Bill, when there must inevitably be a mass of detailed and complicated provisions, and where a large number of individuals may well be affected.
The place to consider matters of this kind is not on the Floor of the House but in a small Committee, assisted by counsel, maps, plans and witnesses as necessary. Yet if Special Order procedure is to be adopted, not only will this Order not come under detailed examination, but no officer or Committee of the House has the right—let alone the duty—to call for an explanation of any Clause.
Now I come to when a Petition is presented against a Special Procedure Order. In this case, even a Joint Committee can only make Amendments "to give effect to the Petition" and not other amendments which might improve the Order. This applies even although, as has happened with some Special Procedure Orders, an error has been discovered by the Minister and he desires to make an Amendment.
If someone wishes to object to the Order as a whole, as opposed to only a part of it, the position is even worse, since such a Petition "of general objection" can only reach a Committee after a Motion is agreed to by the House, referring it to a Joint Committee. The difficulties of organising this are almost insuperable.
The petitioner must—all in the space of fourteen days—consider the effect of the Order on himself and his property;

take any necessary professional advice; draft and deposit his Petition in conformity with a complex list of rules and Standing Orders; contact two Members of Parliament or Peers, one to put down a motion to annul the Order, the other to put down an Amendment to refer his Petition to a joint committee, and finally, still within the fourteen days, obtain a majority of Peers or Members to stay late at night and vote for him on a complex local matter, outside their constituencies and almost certainly against the advice of the Government Whips.
My final objection to the use of the Special Order procedure is its extreme rigidity. Firstly, petitioning time is only fourteen days from the laying of the Order, compared with two months in the case of Private Bills. Secondly, the time for moving Motions to annul is only fourteen days, compared with forty days for Statutory Instruments. These fourteen days may, in practice, be reduced to four or five working Parliamentary days. Thirdly, there is no procedure for relaxing the rules, for example, for late petitions, as is the case with Private Bills.
Therefore, I come again to the Esso Bill Select Committee and its recommendation of Provisional Order Bills as the proper way to deal with this type of legislation. This conclusion was only reached after the most careful consideration. Provisional Order Bills are more satisfactory, since they ensure adequate Parliamentary control and opportunity for Amendments, settlements, and so on, to be arrived at.
I have heard of only two objections to Provisional Order Bills. The first is that they are more expensive. That difficulty can be overcome if the Government legislation on pipelines includes provisions such as the waiving of House fees and printing requirements, and possibly requiring a hearing by a Joint Committee instead of Committees in each House.
The other objection is that Provisional Orders take longer than Special Procedure Orders. This would strike me as not such a bad thing, although they need not take so long if a hearing before a Joint Committee took the place of a hearing by a Committee in each House. One of the most recent Provisional Orders took only twenty-three days in the Commons.
I apologise to the House for having taken up so much time, but I regard it as important that, in what may become a substantial new field of legislation, we should get off on the right foot and that we should get our procedure right from the beginning.

7.53 p.m.

Mr. William Warbey: The hon. Member for Nantwich (Mr. Grant-Ferris) began his speech by congratulating the promoters of the Bill for galvanising the Government into action. I would like to express my thanks to the promoters, but in a more limited way, because I shall have some harsh words to say about this matter.
The promoters are to be thanked for providing us with an opportunity for a debate on an important matter of public policy. I also thank them for providing me with some information, and a useful folder in which to put my notes. But that is as far as I can go in my thanks.
After all, it was not the promoters who galvanised the Government into action. It was partly, as the hon. Member for Dover (Mr. Arbuthnot) said, the Select Committee on the Esso Bill, and also hon. Members who pressed on the Government during the Second Reading of the Esso Bill, the necessity for making a proper review of this whole and important developing new field of transport. Hon. Members must consider whether or not the promoters have acted rightly in pressing on with this Bill, first, in the face of the unanimous recommendation of the Select Committee on the Esso Bill, secondly, the acceptance of that recommendation by the Minister with the approval of the House, and, thirdly, the thrice repeated opposition of the Minister to the Bill.
I do not take the view that the promoters were seeking to perform a public service in spending a good deal of money and time with going on with a Bill which, clearly, is doomed. I noted with some care the provisional proposal for the withdrawal of the Motion for the Second Reading of the Bill which was put forward by the hon. Member for Nantwich who said that withdrawal would be conditional on two things: first, an undertaking by the Government that there would be early legislation to deal with

this whole question; and, secondly, that the Minister would indicate that within the framework of public legislation, a way would be left for private enterprise. That, I should have thought, was the real motive of the promoters.
What they are after is to find a way of making further profits. They would not otherwise have gone on with the Bill, nor would they have sought to stake a claim in whatever may happen in the future. The specific proposals made by the promoters, so far as I can judge by the information they have supplied to me, and by the inquiries I have made, do not really add up to a carefully considered scheme which is worthy of the consideration of the House and of the Government. Frankly, it looked to me as being a half-baked scheme, and I am not altered in that view after having heard what the hon. Member for Nantwich had to say.
The promoters are suggesting the building of a pipeline running from the Thames Estuary, up to Denham, and, eventually, up to Merseyside, with various spurs. But we have not heard from the promoters, or from the hon. Member for Nantwich, what the requirements are. There has been no assessment of the likely traffic to be carried in this pipeline, no indication that any prospective users have said that they are prepared to make use of it, and no indication that the spur lines will serve a useful purpose or are even required. Neither is it explained where they should be.
There has been a great deal of publicity in the Press about the wonderful things which could happen in the future when these pipelines are fully developed; that they are capable of being used to carry not only oil, but semi-solids as well as solids. If that is the case, and if that is what the promoters have in view, why are they proposing to lay down only a 10-inch pipeline? What use will a 10-inch pipeline be in the light of future developments?
In America, where pipelines are used for these purposes, they use 24-inch pipelines. Thus, a 10-inch pipeline would be totally inadequate for the purposes envisaged in the future. Obviously, if the promoters were successful with this Measure, they would eventually have to seek new powers to lay down another pipeline along side the existing one, with


further disturbance to the properties over which they would have to pass. Altogether, one cannot regard this as a fully considered, rationally planned scheme which would be worthy of public approval.
The promoters of the Bill—we should be frank about this; we cannot really blame them—are only doing what private interests have done in this country and will no doubt continue to do for a long time until they are curbed. They are staking out a claim in something which looks like being a good thing in the future. They wish to get powers to acquire a semi-monopoly position in an important, new and developing field of transport in order to make profits. That is the position.
I say that it is altogether wrong that the Private Bill procedure, in particular, should be used to enable private persons to seek special claims and rights for the making of profits. It is perfectly true, as was said by my hon. Friend the Member for Southwark (Mr. Gunter), that this happened in the nineteenth century in connection with canals and railways. In recent years we have witnessed the chaotic result of what was done then—the provision of a partly duplicated and partly inadequate system of transport.
That was done largely by the promotion of Private Bills in a piecemeal fashion in which each promoter was seeking special advantages for himself and for his group of friends. That kind of thing may have been good enough for the buccaneering days of nineteenth century profitability. It is not good enough for the twentieth century, and we can not allow it to be repeated. I would go further—

Mr. Geoffrey Wilson: If the hon. Member is proposing to make excursions into railway history, will he admit that the "buccaneers", as he called them, provided a railway system within the short period of ten years? We were provided with a complete railway system by private enterprise at its own cost in a very short time.

Mr. Warbey: Without going into the whole of railway history, I would not suggest that they did not act without a great deal of speed and energy and that, in many directions, there were useful

and valuable results. But, nevertheless, the total result of these unco-ordinated private efforts was that, in the end, we had an unco-ordinated system which, as I say, was overlapping and duplicating in some places, and, in others, inadequate for the public purpose.
We must see that in this new and developing field of transport that story is not repeated. We must certainly ensure, as a matter of principle, that we do not allow public and Parliamentary sanction to be given to private groups to enjoy statutory rights over a monopoly or semi-monopoly system of transport which would enable them to make profit for themselves.

Mr. A. P. Costain: Will the hon. Member please explain why he says that there will be only a 10-inch pipeline which will not be big enough for the purpose, and then says that these people will have a monopoly and that no one else will have an opportunity to lay a pipeline?

Mr. Warbey: I was careful to refer to a semi-monopoly. In fact, as we see in the case of the railways and canals, and as we have seen in the case of the pipelines already developed in this country, there is no question of an absolute monopoly. Nevertheless, whoever gets in first, and gets into an advantageous position, will have very definite advantages over his competitors and the community as a whole.
We can see, that for example, in the case of a number of pipelines being developed, or which it is proposed shall be developed, toward London Airport. First, there was one, then two, then three, and now, in this Bill, a fourth is proposed. That is the way the thing goes on, without any consideration for the real needs of the community in respect of that form of development. At certain stages it confers a specific advantage on private individuals which ought not to happen. I would go further and say, as has been said by my hon. Friend, that this whole matter is so much a question of public interest and of sustaining the interest of the community in the co-ordinated development of transport that we cannot allow it to be subjected to any form of piecemeal private development, even within the framework of public legislation.
I hope that we shall have a much more explicit indication from the Minister of what the Government have in mind than we have so far been given. The hon. Member for Dover dealt with a question of particular forms of Parliamentary procedure which the Minister might have in mind. In particular, I think it important to know whether the Minister is thinking only of retaining parliamentary approval in those cases where compulsory powers are asked for. As I understand, if the promoters of the Bill were ever to get their way, and be able to put down a pipeline as far as Denham, it would be possible to extend it from Denham to Merseyside solely by agreement with the British Transport Commission regarding wayleaves and without seeking compulsory powers at all; and Parliament might be left out of the question altogether,
I hope that the Minister will go further. This is not only a matter of specific forms of Parliamentary procedure, even if we set up a system of general legislation, public inquiry, Ministerial approval, Parliamentary approval, and so on. Does it mean that this whole matter of pipeline development will depend on the initiation of applications by private interests? Will the Government wait for applications to come in from private interests? Will they deal with those applications in a piecemeal fashion, as inevitably they must, if they rely on the initiative to come from private interests? Or are the Government proposing to work out a plan for pipeline development as a whole in accordance with an assessed estimate of national need?
Will the Government set up a public body to ensure that whatever development takes place is in conformity with the national need and that there will be a continuing oversight over the development? That is the very least that can be asked of the Government by hon. Members on this side of the House and the very least that is asked by people who support right hon. and hon. Gentlemen opposite.
In the leading article to which my hon. Friend the Member for Southwark referred, The Times came to the conclusion very firmly that, sooner or later, public control over pipeline systems would have to be much more systematic and extensive. In a leading article on

the same day, 7th March, the Guardian definitely took the view that all this development would need to be closely co-ordinated and that public ownership under one authority might well be the solution.
Anybody who did not adopt a doctrinaire approach to this question would be forced to that view. In a matter which is expected to be one of national interest, what kind of system, other than public ownership and control, will ensure that this important development of transport takes place in such a way that there is no conferring of special rights on private interests, and so that it is in accordance with a co-ordinated plan of development and with the total national need? I do not believe that there is any other method. This is not a doctrinaire question. I am forced to the conclusion that the only way in which this development can be controlled in future is through public ownership, and I hope that the Minister will say so.

8.12 p.m.

The Minister of Power (Mr. Richard Wood): There has been some talk in several speeches about galvanisation and whether the Government were galvanised and, if so, by whom. It is not necessarily proper for me to enter that argument tonight, but I tell the company responsible for our debate that it has so far been extremely useful and I have no doubt that it will continue to be so, because from both sides of the House I have heard views which will be extremely important in the Government's efforts to reach the best procedure for the future to deal with the pipeline development which is certain to take place.
I want briefly to refer to one or two statements which I made on the Second Reading of the Esso Bill, and since. I apologise for quoting from my own speeches. I am reluctant to do so on the whole, and I occasionally find it rather embarrassing, but I have to do so this evening in order to put certain things on the record and to explain the attitude which the Government take to the present proposal.
The first quotation is from my speech on 28th June, last year, on the Second Reading of the Esso Bill, when I said:
…the Government believe that it is most important that an examination should take


place on the general problem of pipeline development. In fact, they have already begun to examine this problem and to examine procedures which they think should be followed in future in regard to these matters."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 28th June, 1960; Vol. 625, c.1303.]
After the Esso Bill was given a Second Reading that night, the next important step was the Special Report of the Select Committee to which my hon. Friend the Member for Dover (Mr. Arbuthnot) referred, especially its recommendation that no further Private Bills for the construction of pipelines should be passed by the House. I shall refer later to the very interesting speech that my hon. Friend made about the relative merits of the Provisional Order procedure or special Parliamentary procedure.
The noble Lord, Lord Mills, in a debate in another place in November, underlined what I had said and said that the Government were undertaking an examination of the general problem of pipeline development. In answer to the hon. Member for Ashfield (Mr. Warbey) in November, I repeated that undertaking and said that we hoped to make a statement before very long.
On that occasion, the first occasion on which it was possible to express a view on the proposal which we are now discussing, I said:
I think it is impossible for the Government to give support to that Bill in the light of the recommendation of the Select Committee, and while we are also awaiting the results of the inquiry which I promised."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 28th November, 1960; Vol. 631, c.9.]
Finally—and it will relieve the House to know that this is the last quotation—on 6th March I announced the Government's intention about future procedure and I said:
So far as the Trunk Pipelines Bill is concerned, I have said on two occasions that it is impossible for the Government to support the Bill. As the House will realise, it would not be subject to the new procedure which the Government have decided should be applied to projects of this kind. I think the House would agree that the Trunk Pipelines Bill deals with a very important project, and it therefore might be expected to need this new procedure."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 6th March, 1961; Vol. 636, c.2–3.]
The speeches so far made in the debate make it clear that those sentiments command the acceptance of every hon. Member who has spoken so far, and perhaps also those who will take part in

the debate. Everyone feels that this project is very important and, the Government having reached the conclusion that there should be a new and general procedure to deal with these matters, I think that it is generally felt that the procedure ought to apply to a project of this kind.
Since 6th March, we have been making preparations for consulting the fairly long list of interests concerned in order to get their views about what the best procedure for the future should be. The kind of procedure which the House and I have in mind is that proposals should be put forward—and I do not want to side-track the question raised by the hon. Member for Ashfield by suggesting that they need on all occasions be brought forward only by private enterprise—and that then there should be provision for a public inquiry—and this accords with the wishes of the House—where all the interests affected can make representations. The inquiry might be on the lines of those held when the Generating Board make proposals to build generating stations or place grid lines over the country, with anyone able to be heard and make representations, the subsequent procedure being to allow the House of Commons to express an opinion on the provisional decision reached as a result of the public inquiry.
The hon. Member for Ashfield made the point that it was important for Parliament to be allowed to look at all the proposals that might be made. He was quite right. An important project which did not happen to require compulsory powers might escape the net. I feel that the procedure which is eventually agreed upon must be such that important projects of the kind he mentioned should be those on which Parliament should have the right to express a view.
On the other hand, there may be small projects at the other end of the spectrum which, although involving compulsory rights, may merely involve the crossing of a small field between two parts of a works. Whether or not Parliament will necessarily want to concern itself with schemes of that kind, I do not know. Therefore the efforts I am making at the moment are to try, with the help of the interests concerned, to evolve a procedure which will not necessarily waste Parliament's time with the very small project, but which will give


Parliament an opportunity to express its view on the kind of projects Parliament obviously ought to have before it.

Mr. Gunter: Could the right hon. Gentleman tell us, in respect of the consideration given to the project, how this will fit in with the intention of the Minister of Transport expressed in his White Paper on the reorganisation of the B.T.C. whereby it will be empowered to promote legislation?

Mr. Wood: I very much bear in mind the White Paper, but I do not think that need conflict in any way with the procedure which might be adopted. The view was expressed in the White Paper that this kind of development along the property of the British Transport Commission would be a very valuable feature of the future. I hope that it will take place, but I do not think it need necessarily create any difficulties in the procedure we have in mind.

Mr. Gunter: We did not quite understand that there were to be schemes on the Commission's own property, but we understood that the schemes would be mostly emerging from it.

Mr. Wood: I do not think the details are in any way firm and certain. I believe that the particular scheme we are discussing tonight involves an extremely small incursion into private rights. It may be that if that small incursion had been avoided the need for a Private Bill would have been absent. It would be right for Parliament to have the ability to scrutinise projects of this magnitude and importance even if they did not involve compulsory rights.
There is one thing more I wish to say on the question of public ownership. My belief is that the House and myself, in consultation with the interests concerned, can look forward to a procedure which on the whole will command general agreement. I am not suggesting that it will necessarily involve the public ownership of these lines. What I am striving for is that it should involve some measure of control over the lines. I could not help thinking when the hon. Member for Ashfield talked about a doctrinaire approach that my experience in the House since I arrived here has been that anyone whose doctrine is different from one's own happens to be doctrinaire.
My feeling is that there would be a great many difficulties in insisting on public ownership of these pipelines. One of the difficulties would be that the Government would be required to lay out a very considerable amount of capital expenditure largely at the behest of private companies. As we can see, it would be useless for Governments themselves to decide where pipelines should go if the private companies were not willing to co-operate and to put anything in them.
There are many respectable precedents of this kind. It seems sensible that we should leave largely to the initiative of private enterprise the development of this pipeline system, provided—here I hope that I shall carry the hon. Member with me—that there is public control of a recognised plan and pattern, which I think all of us on both sides of the House think is most important.
I hope, and this will be my endeavour, that as my discussions progress with the interests involved—and I shall be willing to discuss the matter with any hon. Member—we can reach a new procedure as quickly as possible to deal with this development, which may be very considerable in future, a procedure which will command the assent of the great majority of the House of Commons.

Mr. Grant-Ferris: Does my right hon. Friend hope—I will put it no higher than that—that it will be possible for him to introduce legislation in the next Session?

Mr. Wood: It is certainly my intention to hold discussions with interests in order to provide legislation as soon as it can possibly be done. I hope that, possibly, it will be practicable to introduce it in the next Session in order to provide a framework in which proposals of the kind which we are discussing can be dealt with.

Mr. Grant-Ferris: I am obliged to my right hon. Friend.

Mrs. Judith Hart: I wonder whether the Minister would amplify some of his remarks? I refer to his consideration of the procedure to be adopted, bearing in mind the need for a public inquiry and for further consideration by Parliament. If a public inquiry is held into a whole project, which presumably involves the delineation of a route from


point A to point B, that is one thing; but some of us were concerned in the Select Committee with the rights of the individual to have an inquiry into a proposal affecting his own piece of land. I envisage the possibility that a whole project would be approved following a public inquiry, as in the case of a new town, but that provision must still be made for the individual objector to be fully heard.

Mr. Wood: This is a most important point. It has always been my view that the whole concept of a public inquiry into projects of this kind should facilitate a change in the direction of the route of the pipeline in order to accommodate any interests which might be affected. As my hon. Friend the Member for Dover mentioned, it should also take into account the breweries, who may be some way away from the route of the pipeline but who may be affected. I am only thinking aloud, but the best solution seems to be to make the public inquiry procedure pretty wide so that any interests concerned, whether directly in the route of the pipeline or away from it, could make their objections on that occasion.

Mrs. Hart: This is a very important point, as the Minister agrees. Let us suppose that Mr. Brown, living in a suburb, knows nothing about a public local inquiry which is being held into a trunk pipeline which it is proposed to construct. Let us suppose that he knows nothing about it until, six months or a year later, he is suddenly presented with the fact that his back garden is to be dug up. His opportunity to make this objection will have gone. I am concerned with the basic right of the individual, which might be threatened, and indeed might still be threatened under the procedure which the Minister has outlined.

Mr. Wood: It is very difficult to ensure that everyone who is affected knows about it except by widespread advertisement of the project, as in the case of electricity wayleaves. Any procedure should require the advertisement of a route in proper circumstances so that anyone who is reasonably wide awake has the chance of making his objections heard.

8.30 p.m.

Mr. Ede: The Minister has given his reply to the appeal made by the hon. Member for Nantwich (Mr. Grant-Ferris) and it is not for me to say whether the hon. Member regards it as satisfactory. I thought that it was a very reasonable approach to the very big problem which is before us.
Let us not think that in dealing with this matter we are dealing with a purely temporary problem not of great significance to every part of the country. We must be very careful that we do not repeat the mistakes which our ancestors made over 100 years ago in framing the original way of dealing with railway development. We saw grow up all over the country small railways connecting towns eight or ten miles apart—a system, as it ultimately turned out, of such fragmentation that in the end much time had to be spent in trying to bring all these little bits together in a service which would serve the public adequately.
The right hon. Gentleman said there might be two big stretches with one field between. It is important that a connection be made across that field in order to make a connected and wide system available. Let us be certain of that. The House must give very serious consideration to any schemes which the right hon. Gentleman is able to arrange between the limited vested interests to be quite sure that the overall national interest is served when all the smaller private groups have had settled the little pieces which they regard as being especially remunerative.
Unless we are very careful we might create for ourselves the same kind of difficulty as was created in the railway world when Mr. Hudson and a few others were trying to pick out all the lucrative parts of this new service and to establish, as my hon. Friend the Member for Ash-field (Mr. Warbey) suggested, a vested interest with the aid of which they could resist a new proposal because it would interfere with the monopoly which Parliament had given them over a small area of the country. As a result, on some occasions necessary connections of a cross-country kind were prevented.
I hope that the right hon. Gentleman and those who will advise him will bear in mind that it is almost certain that this will become a vital national service


within a very few years. We do not want to have the same kind of problems as arose about the railways and even about the electricity supply of the country, in respect of which, under a Measure passed in 1888, Orders were made in regard to separate parishes, and even to parts of parishes.
When, in 1934, I was appointed chairman of the London and Home Counties Joint Electricity Authority, I had to deal with cases in which part of a parish was served by a municipal electricity service and the remainder of the parish by an electricity company, each under separate Orders which expired at different dates. That created very great difficulties in getting a co-ordinated system in comparatively small areas, and over wider areas it reduced the problem to something that was only finally solvable by nationalising the whole lot. The main justification for nationalising the electricity industry was that it had been established in such a fragmented form that, in the end, a national scheme was the only way out.
I do not want to get involved in what has been called doctrinaire problems. I believe in what the right hon. Gentleman said; one's own doctrine is completely sound and every reasonable person should agree with it, but the fellow who differs from it is inspired by selfish, narrow, doctrinaire motives that make the reasonable solution of any problem almost impossible.
I hope that the Minister will be able to proceed quickly with the negotiations so that in the next Session of Parliament a Measure may be brought forward. I imagine that it will have to be brought forward under some quite novel procedure. While I am quite sure that those hon. Members who heard him must be very grateful to the hon. Member for Dover (Mr. Arbuthnot) for the way in which he went through the details of the existing systems that can be employed, I would ask the right hon. Gentleman at least to consider whether it might not be desirable in this case to have a special procedure to deal with this problem in the light of all the troubles we have inherited from the past in other similar systems, such as railways, electricity and gas, which, as those engaged in local government and in the promotion of those services know, very often led to inefficiency and needless expense necessary

because of the requirements laid down by this House.
It is high time that we gave some consideration to this matter on a national basis, and that those—whether they be local authorities or private companies—who promote proposals should be expected to fit them into the national scheme that has been laid out. Otherwise, we shall have a repetition of some of the evils of the past.
It is desirable that this should be done quickly, and that there should be a discussion in the House on the general scheme before we proceed with the promotion of any other Bill. I must say that when I hear of half a dozen 10-inch pipes running side by side we must be very careful how we deal with such a problem. We do not want to inflict on a good many parts of the country the hideous monstrosity of the London outfall sewer which goes through the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for West Ham, North (Mr. A. Lewis), and other places on that line—curiously enough, almost the line proposed by the Bill for, at any rate, part of the way. An eyesore has there been created, and a hindrance to the reasonable development of the area which this kind of line bisects and makes it almost impossible to create an ordered community there.
The right hon. Gentleman gave us every indication that he has the gigantic nature of these proposals in his mind, and I wish him well in the consideration that he gives to it. I hope that those who negotiate with him on behalf of the various interests will be inspired by the Minister's spirit of concern for the public interest, so that we can get a reasonable way of dealing with this problem. I hope, too, that, before he comes to us with any proposals, he will keep in mind the possible future development that may flow from this. I heartily support the views generally expressed by my hon. Friends the Members for Southwark (Mr. Gunter) and for Ashfield. As I say, while I wish the right hon. Gentleman well in the task that he is undertaking, I hope that those who meet him may be inspired by his own sense of public service in the negotiations into which they enter.

8.40 p.m.

Mr. F. V. Corfield: I oppose the Second Reading of the Bill for precisely the same reasons


as I expressed in the debate on the Esso Bill. I certainly do not want to weary the House by going into them again. My hon. Friend the Member for Dover (Mr. Arbuthnot) has reminded the House that the Esso Bill was sent to a Select Committee instead of to the ordinary Private Bill Committee and that it went there with an Instruction—

Mr. Deputy-Speaker (Major Sir William Anstruther-Gray): Am I right in thinking that the hon. Member rises to move his Amendment?

Mr. Corfield: That is so, Mr. Deputy-Speaker. I thought that it would have the same effect as opposing the Second Reading.
I beg to move, to leave out "now" and at the end of the Question to add "upon this day six months."
I move this Amendment for the same reasons as I expressed on the Esso Bill. That Bill went to the Select Committee with an Instruction designed to incorporate the safeguards of the public inquiry system with the parliamentary control that we regard as necessary. It also went with an Instruction asking the Select Committee to consider the suitability of the Private Bill procedure generally and to report whether general legislation was desirable.
I moved that Instruction at the time solely on the ground that I did not consider the procedure suitable for a Bill of this type. My right hon. Friend the Minister undertook to consider the question of legislation. He has advanced somewhat further in the meantime and he has made a statement today which I very much welcome. In the light, however, of the recommendation of the Select Committee and of my right hon. Friend's undertaking, I have difficulty in joining my hon. Friend the Member for Nantwich (Mr. Grant-Ferris) in his welcome and congratulation for all the galvanisation that has gone on. I would have thought that most of the galvanisation was caused by my hon. Friend the Member for Dover and those of us whose work in trying to draft these complicated matters, ably assisted by the servants of the House, has made it possible for the Committee to study the matter in the way that started the galvanisation.
In the light of the recommendation of the Select Committee, I am in doubt as to the propriety of any Private Bill promoter bringing forward a Bill into this House after that has been done. I am glad to say that I am not a shareholder in the company. If I were, I should want to ask several questions. I am not concerned with the merits of the Bill. I have no doubt that it may be a good Bill. I am not against pipelines, but I firmly believe that we have to bring this question under general legislation and I very much welcome my right hon. Friend's statement. I hope that his proposal will not be too long delayed.

8.43 p.m.

Sir Leslie Plummer: I understood from the hon. Member for Nantwich (Mr. Grant-Ferris), who introduced the Bill, that the promoters had spent £70,000 on the promotion of it by way of survey, printing, fees and the rest. I hope that they are satisfied with what they have got for their £70,000. While I applaud wholeheartedly what the Minister said from the Front Bench, I must put an additional burden upon him by quoting part of one of his speeches. On June 28th last year he said:
As to the future, the Government believe that it is most important that an examination should take place on the general problem of pipeline development. In fact, they have already begun to examine this problem…."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 28th June, 1960; Vol. 625, c.1303.]
That was about ten months ago. Allowing that the Government had already begun to examine the problem, we can say that they have been at it for a year. I do not know how much longer they will be at it or to what extent they have been speeded up by the £70,000 expended by the promoters. I should have thought, however—I say this to the hon. Member for Gloucestershire, South (Mr. Corfield)—that there is an air of impropriety after the recommendation of the Select Committee on the Esso Bill when the present Bill is produced in this form.
I sat as a member of the Select Committee on the Esso Bill under the chairmanship of the hon. Member for Dover (Mr. Arbuthnot). I wish to take this opportunity—I speak, I am sure, on behalf of those of my colleagues on this


side of the House—of saying that we were impressed by the ability of the hon. Member for Dover, by the way in which he conducted the whole of the inquiry, by his patience, his good humour and his tolerance for the many questions that we were forced to ask those who were present and also we thank him for his guidance to the Committee. We can say without being immodest that we did our best to do a good job and that our recommendation, which was arrived at unanimously—there were five Conservatives and four Labour Members on the Select Committee—was forced upon us by the arguments that were presented during the twenty hours or so we sat.
I come back to the question of what might be called impropriety, although I do not want to use too harsh a word. I am sure that the hon. Member for Nantwich will not misunderstand me in referring to the impropriety of the way in which the Bill has been presented. I say "impropriety" only in relation to the recommendation of the Select Committee on the Esso Bill. We knew who Esso and the Esso Company were. It is true that the promoters, the Esso people, roughly took Mr. Charles Wilson's line when he said that what was good for General Motors was good for the United States, for they were taking the line that their Bill was good for Esso and, therefore, it was good for the country. They claimed that the powers they sought under the Bill were right because they sold 10 million gallons of petrol a day, or whatever the astronomical figure was. But, as I say, we knew, roughly speaking, who the company was.
I may be ignorant—perhaps other hon. Members have the information—but I do not know who the promoters of the present Bill are. I know the name and that it is a company of shareholders. I do not know how many shareholders there are, who they are, who the directors are or what the capital is. I know nothing about the firm. It is asking a a little too much of the House to suggest that a company that is a société anonyme should be given powers by this House to have such tremendous authority over people whom they regard as being in their power and to say, "It is expedient to us to go across your backyard and therefore we propose to do so." That is the impropriety of the proposition.
I was impressed during the proceedings of the Select Committee on which I served with one of the arguments which was put forward, although I do not think that it should be relevant to us here, whether we are sitting as a House or in Committee. The argument was that money had been spent by people with an interest in the matter and therefore it was proper that the Bill should go through. I remember the argument which was put forward on 28th June. I think that it was referred to by the hon. Member for Abingdon (Mr. Neave). It was said that three years before June last year, I.C.I. had bought some land in Gloucester for the purpose of setting up a new factory to which the pipeline was to carry a certain product. This was adduced—the hon. Member complained about it—as a reason why Parliament should give the promoters of the Bill powers which it would be chary of giving even to a Government Department.
I cannot understand why the Government have not listened carefully to us on the question of the Provisional Order. It is no fun being a member of a Select Committee. It takes up a lot of one's time. At the end of a morning's session one is exhausted. We were faced with an array of counsel who were getting more for one day's sitting than we get for a year's work in this House. They also receive refreshers, which we do not receive. They are clever to a degree. They are capable and they talk with the tongues of serpents. One has to be alert the whole time. One cannot sleep on these Committees. When at the end of a long period of consideration and a comparatively short but quite painful period of gestation we come to a unanimous decision, we expect the Government to listen to what we the representatives of the House have to say. The decisions are not arrived at lightly. They are not produced in a doctrinaire fashion. I assure the House that there was no doctrinaire difference between the five Conservative Members and the four Labour Members on the Select Committee. We were convinced intellectually that it was necessary that a Bill similar to this one should be produced under the Provisional Order procedure.
I wish to make a suggestion to the right hon. Gentleman. When on the


Esso Bill Select Committee I had it borne in on me while listening to the evidence of the complainants, of the Petitioners and of the promoters at our five sittings that what we need in Britain is a Pipeline Authority. I do not think that we can deal with this matter piecemeal any more. What my right hon. Friend the Member for South Shields (Mr. Ede) said about the development of the railways is true. We do not want to produce new Hudsons in this country, people who get in and out quickly after they have made a profit. We do not want people to build these pipelines just to meet a temporary situation which enriches them. We want a national survey of the pipeline needs of this country. That can be done properly only by an authority composed of geophysicists, engineers and hydraulics people, an authority which can advise the Government from its experience, and as a result of conversations with all the interests concerned, on how the pipelines should develop.
We have authorities for all sorts of things in this country. For instance, the Government delegates responsibility to the Independent Television Authority for commercial television. Heaven forbid that I should suggest that a similar organisation should be set up. We want an authority which is not controlled or influenced by other interests but is concerned only with the future of the economic development of this country, and one other thing.
On the Select Committee we learnt that no one can build a pipeline here without its affecting the Ministry of Defence, for obvious reasons. But the Ministry of Defence should not be canvassed by interests. It ought to have a relationship with an overriding statutory authority which takes into consideration our national defence needs as well as our economic needs. I do not urge the Minister to be in a great hurry. It is very important that we should do the thing properly, and I suggest that he should take time over it. There is no harm in our going on a little longer with the present position.
However, I suggest to the right hon. Gentleman in the spirit that he himself showed that he should give careful consideration to the establishment of a Pipeline Authority which will devote itself

to a study of the economic and defence needs of the country, which will consider the aesthetics and which will ensure that no private individual or association of individuals shall have the power of ingress, or taking over, or of compulsory acquisition, which, as I say, the House would not give to any Government Department except in a dire emergency, such as a war.

8.55 p.m.

Mr. T. H. H. Skeet: I agree that it is unfortunate that an expenditure of £70,000 has been already made on this line, but I think I should say that a dine of 10-inch diameter is not too small. A crude oil pipeline is of considerable dimensions but a product line such as Trapil is of that dimension.
Coming to matters which are more fundamental, I was rather impressed by the remarks of the hon. Member for Southwark (Mr. Gunter) when he pleaded that we should stop making some of the errors of the past years. When, however, the hon. Member indicated that he was in favour of a common carrier I thought that that must lead inevitably to the nationalisation of the pipeline system. Surely we have learned from past experience over the years in th United States that one must approach the common carrier system with some trepidation.
In America legislation governing oil pipelines is the Inter-State Commerce Act, 1887, and the Hepburn Act, 1906. This legislation has meant that America is now stuck with a common carrier system. Whether they like it or not, pipeline companies have to carry the obligations of common carriers. The traditions which are applicable in the United States are certainly not applicable in the United Kingdom. This should be borne in mind when we are on the threshold of installing product lines and crude-oil lines. In the conditions operating in the United States it has been found rather embarrassing to have such legislation perpetuating the practice of common carriers.
It would be a great error if we in the United Kingdom fell into the same trap and provided that all lines established here should be common carriers. The adoption of a common carrier system means that if an adequate tender is presented at one end of the line the


load is bound to be carried. Hon. Members should think of all the complications that would follow if for example our pipelines had to deal with foreign suppliers. What would happen, for example, if a Russian supplier presented his products at one end of the line? They would be bound to be carried although such a course might be of great detriment to this country. Last year, the Italians made a contract with the Soviet Government for the purchase of 12 million tons of oil. If a common carrier pipeline were established in the United Kingdom, we might find Russian oil being imported into this country. [HON. MEMBERS: "Why not?"] I will come to that point. I thought that it was argued from that side of the House that we were having some difficulties in the coal-mining industry because of the competition from oil supplies.
While it is a good argument that oil products supplied from our own refineries, or imported on balancing operations should be admitted, we should nevertheless be careful what additional supplies of products come from random sources abroad. We would be getting into great difficulties with the people of the Middle East if we took oil supplies from the Soviet Union and not from our traditional sources in the Persian Gulf. If we had the common carrier system which is envisaged in Clause 51 it would mean that as soon as a suitable tender was presented at the end of the line the operator would be bound to carry it, and, as I have said, there would be great difficulties with miners and others if we had Russian oil supplies coming into the country.

Mrs. Hart: Would the hon. Member tell us how he would distinguish between carriage by road, with lorries conveying a product which has been imported into this country from Russia, and carriage by pipeline of products imported from Russia or any other country?

Mr. Skeet: It would be very much better if we considered what has happened to the railway system. A common carrier system has been imposed on it, which has been a drag on the railways for years. That same obligation might be imposed on the pipeline system, and, if it were, similar difficulties would arise. Perhaps I could go a little further. We

should learn not to have the experiment of the Hepburn Act of 1906 applied in the United Kingdom. Let us start off in the year 1961—and have legislation that is most suitable to our requirements.
I appreciate what my right hon. Friend has indicated, and I think that it is exactly the right idea, that there must be some residual control by the House of Commons. I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Dover (Mr. Arbuthnot) for indicating the procedure that might possibly apply. It is the companies that know where the line should be laid, but I hope that it will be possible in certain cases for them to have wayleaves alongside the permanent ways of the British Transport Commission. It should not, however, be obligatory; it should be permissive. To go back to the point of the common carrier, we are thinking well ahead and possibly in the terms of moving coal. There the common carrier is quite out of the question because there is only one owner. If we are not to have a common carrier for the National Coal Board, I do not see why we should enforce on the oil companies a common carrier service.
Would it not be better that there should be private owners of lines for integrated lines between the terminal and the refinery, or a joint venture by a number of companies operating together, or open-ended systems? In a certain minority of cases it might be suitable to have what is known as the common carrier system.
I would emphasise that it may be possible in future years to have pipelines for the movement of china clay, possibly from Cornwall, or the movement of milk from our outlying districts to our great cities. For the movement of chemicals it would be quite unsuitable that the common carrier system should operate. I think that it is entirely wrong for hon. Members opposite to indicate that the common carrier system should be utilised in all circumstances. It might be very much better to adopt the procedure laid down by my right hon. Friend and to indicate that there should be a variety of methods of ownership. It is not necessary to have a proprietary interest in the State. All that we should have is a system of


general control or supervision to ensure that the pipelines are laid out in an orderly formation.

Sir L. Plummer: Can the hon. Gentleman tell me which hon. Member from this side of the House advocated that there should be common carrier system? I do not mind the hon. Member knocking the Bill about at all; no one on this side of the House promoted the Bill.

Mr. Skeet: The hon. Member for Southwark indicated it in the course of his speech. I think that he would acknowledge that that is exactly what he indicated.

Mr. Gunter: Mr. Gunter indicated assent.

Mr. Skeet: That is why I have to address certain of my remarks to this rather important point. I think that it is a matter of very great importance that we should concern ourselves with the guarantee of private interests. In examining the Bill, I noted that only 0·6 miles are measured over private land but that there are 20 miles held by the North Thames Gas Board which would require to obtain further easements from property owners to carry pipes not owned by the Board.
May I make one or two further suggestions on the merits of the Bill. Is it advisable that this line should come right through the heart of London? Even Trapil does not cross the heart of Paris or follow the course of the Seine. It might be advisable, if the Minister is going to consider this, to have a pipeline approaching the outskirts of London with depôts around it. I do not know. These are several matters for consideration, and they should be considered at higher level. Another point which needs clearing up is whether this line should come to the centre of London and out again to Merseyside. It might be more convenient to have a more direct route. These are matters which the Minister would ultimately have to consider in deciding which is the most economic route when a number of people are making proposals. Obviously, if we have an enabling Bill it may be necessary to make a number of regulations under it. I should like to read out a summary, by an eminent American lawyer, on the

question of safety regulations affecting the American lines:
In 1942 the I.C.C. after intensive investigation of the matter concluded that while the Commission had ample authority the safety record of the pipeline industry and its situation did not warrant the development of a safety code to apply to oil pipeline operations. This conclusion of the Commission still stands.
While we have heard in the past a great deal about what happens when these pipelines are installed, they are safe in practice. We in this country are starting with a comparatively new system. Although there are one or two product and crude lines available, it may nevertheless be useful to start off with a satisfactory code.
If we are to have pipeline systems could they be equitably rated? If the Minister is desirous of having a common carrier system to some extent, would he put into the Bill what he considers to be a reasonable tender? Will he also say whether he is to adopt the American procedure of limiting earnings on a common carrier system? I think that that is, possibly, the wrong approach, but he should nevertheless consider it. Will he also consider the other special procedures which apply to such a system in the United States?
We are very grateful to the promoters of this Bill for giving us an opportunity to express our views on this important topic. A lot has been said about it on both sides of the House. We are generally in agreement that we are going ahead with a very important form of development, and we hope that my right hon. Friend will have it under his Ministry and that it will not, at a later stage, be transferred to the Ministry of Transport. This is an exceedingly technical matter.
I want to make one point clear. It may appear to be a cheap form of transportation, but it is cheap only if it is used largely up to full capacity. If it is used in such a way that the operator pushes through the line products of another company to the exclusion of his own, the line might not prove economical. If a line has a certain amount of spare capacity then that could be made available to others. Full consideration must be given to this matter and safeguards written into whatever Bill is eventually presented.

9.10 p.m.

Mrs. Judith Hart: I am tempted to follow the hon. Member for Willesden, East (Mr. Skeet) with some further exploration into international problems, because it would seem that this subject has opened to us the whole question of Middle East oil supplies and many other topics, including the political reason which should govern our imports of oil. But this is not the appropriate occasion on which to do that.
I support everything said by my hon. Friend the Member for Deptford (Sir L. Plummer) and particularly his remarks about the chairmanship of the hon. Member for Dover (Mr. Arbuthnot) of the Select Committee on the Esso Bill. It was my first experience of a Select Committee and I was able to participate in the deliberations partly because of the excellence of the Chairman and the clarity with which he carried out his duties.
Tonight we are discussing two issues in one; firstly, what should be the attitude of the House of Commons towards Private Bills—in this case the Trunk Pipelines Bill—and, secondly, the whole question of what we hope will be contained in the Government's recommendations about the pipeline system. With regard to the first point, I welcome everything the Minister has said tonight and I hope it will be clearly realised by every hon. Member that whatever a private company may seek to do by promoting a Private Bill, the duty of the House of Commons is to protect the people of this country from any evil effect that may result to them as a result of passing a Bill which may not be a good one.
One of our main concerns on the Esso Committee was the protection of the individual, and it was extraordinary that as a Socialist I found myself being concerned with and associating myself with, the comments and remarks of, for example, the Association of Property Owners and other land-owning organisations, because they were the people during the consideration of the Esso Bill who represented the interests of the ordinary man occupying land. I am more interested in him than I am in the companies or even the local authorities, because they can look after themselves. Local authorities have town clerks and

lawyers to seek out any eventualities which may affect their interests.
The same is true of large companies or organisations. It is when one considers the individual that the facts must be faced, and I do not consider myself to be doctrinaire in asserting that one of the main conceptions of any legislation must be to reconcile the needs of the nation with the freedom and the rights of the individual. It would be wrong for the House to permit this Bill to be passed, simply because the consequence would be that the Select Committee's recommendations about the best possible way of preserving the rights of the individual would be ignored.
The Bill is concerned with only one mile of land in which a new set of easements would have to be achieved. But there is the whole question of the population from Denham to Merseyside to be considered. Although we are not being asked to consider that specific point at the moment, if the Bill is allowed through there is no doubt that the promoters will return to the House in a year or two and say, "You have allowed us to build a pipeline as far as Denham, surely you will now have no objection to our extending it to Merseyside"?
In the pipeline to Merseyside, all the questions that arose when the Esso Bill was discussed will have to be debated anew. Occupiers of land, local authorities, firms and transport undertakings, will all be concerned about their rights even more than they were during the course of the Esso Bill, which proposed to construct a pipeline to Fawley and Severnside. I hope that when the Minister is considering what form an oil pipeline system should take, he will bear in mind a number of other factors. One is that responsibility should be placed firmly on the promoters of a Bill, whatever form it adopts, to ensure that individuals likely to be affected are made fully aware of all the possible effects on them before any public inquiry is held.
In other words, in addition to the normal public inquiry procedure, it should not be the responsibility of the individual to make himself aware of what is happening from reading advertisements in the newspapers. It should be the duty of the promoters to


inform him and in that way the difficulties may be overcome. I confess that at the moment I cannot see how it could be done, but it might well be advisable, after the public inquiry, to allow minor local inquiries at various stages in order to give people opportunities to voice further objections. As I say, I do not see how that can be done, but something along those lines might be considered.
On the technical side there are many questions which have not been touched on tonight. I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Deptford; I think that there is no hurry about this matter. Obviously it is such a new step to be taken by the nation that whether the project takes the form of a State-owned pipeline system or a private enterprise system controlled and planned by the State—which I gather the Minister has in mind—it seems clear that it should not be embarked upon without the most adequate consideration of all the factors involved. Of course, opinions among hon. Members will differ on this matter tremendously, according to the side of the House on which they sit. If consideration conflicts with the need for speed, then the need for speed must take second place.
We ought to have technical advice on the possibilities of future use of pipe lines. Many things may be mentioned and then one talks to an expert on some subject—for example, an expert on coal—and he says, "That may be, but it will take many years. We are not yet beginning to do research on this matter". I think it necessary that we should gather together all the existing scientific evidence and even promote more new research—

Mr. Skeet: There are pipelines all over the world at present, particularly in the United States and in the Middle East, and many technical papers are available to anyone who wishes to study them. Is it necessary, therefore, at this stage to ask for a particular inquiry into the matter?

Mrs. Hart: Indeed, yes. I should say that it would be entirely wrong for the Government to rely on the practice of private enterprise abroad. I say that it is the duty of the State to inform itself on the evidence that there is in this country and even to carry out further research.

I know of no other subject about which the hon. Gentleman would even suggest such a thing or about which he would say that the Government do not need to do any work themselves but might go and ask how, for example, Shell operated in the Middle East.
I ask the Minister to consider setting up a technical inquiry not only into the present-day possibilities of the use of pipelines but beyond the present evidence to future possibilities and to take account of factors which may form the subject of technical papers in two or three years' time. If there is need for more research to arrive at a decision on possible new future uses of pipelines, Government money should be spent on such research. This kind of technical consideration should be borne in mind. It would be wrong, just because we were in too much of a hurry to construct the kind of pipeline suggested by private enterprise, to construct something which would be out of date in ten years.
There is a consideration which ought to be remembered when one is thinking of the relative advantages of private enterprise and State ownership of pipelines. It may well be that it would be found to be far more practical and, from the national point of view, more economic in the construction of pipelines to consider constructing them in conjunction with a national network of roads. In the course of the next twenty years, we shall be extending the country's road system, and it would be infinitely cheaper and more economic in engineering and surveying manpower generally to construct the two together, carving one great way from one major centre of industry to another, with a combined pipeline and new road system. It would be difficult to do that by a combination of private and State enterprise, but it may well be that, not for doctrinaire reasons which hon. Members opposite are bound to oppose on every possible occasion but on grounds of sheer national economy and because it is the sensible and practical thing to do, such a system would have to be arranged. Hon. Members opposite are always anxious to persuade the Government not to waste money, and that system would avoid the waste of money and manpower and national resources. It might be that the sensible thing to do would be for the State to construct a pipeline system which would


be integrated with the other main means of transport.

Mr. Costain: The hon. Lady the Member for Lanark (Mrs. Hart) ought not to give the impression to the world that British engineers have not built pipelines. British engineers have now been building pipelines for two generations. The British Petroleum Company, which is half owned by the Government, has thousands of miles of pipelines. No doubt the hon. Lady has heard of Finart and Milford Haven. Lloyds of London have a special specification for pipelines which is accepted in every Continent. The hon. Lady ought not to give the impression from the House that we do not lead the world in this sort of work. We do not need inquiries to tell us that.

Mrs. Hart: It is precisely because British scientists and technologists lead the world that I am anxious that they should do so in this case. I am not concerned with pipelines which have been built in the past but with those which are to be built in the future as a result of new engineering and scientific techniques. The hon. Member seems completely unaware of that. I want British scientists to show the value of their own work and not to rely on work based on what has been done far back in the past. I want to look to the future. Perhaps the hon. Member does not.

Mr. Costain: From my own personal knowledge I can tell the hon. Lady that pipelines are now being built by British engineers. We lead the world in this respect and we do not need inquiries to show that that is the case.

9.23 p.m.

Mr. R. Gresham Cooke: It is very pleasant to welcome the hon. Lady the Member for Lanark (Mrs. Hart) as a defender of the rights of private property and as a defender of the rights of individuals, and to have such a charming recruit for that cause. If ever a Socialist Government come to power, we shall look forward to her support on this side of the House against any depredations by nationalisation.
We need not get into a cold sweat about this question, for there is nothing revolutionary about pipelines. Many miles of pipelines were laid before the war. There were large gas grids, such as that at

Sheffield, which was laid over hundreds of miles of country before the war. The Government themselves laid a pipeline system in this country during the war, and, as my hon. Friend the Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Mr. Costain) said, there is a great deal of British engineering experience in this matter. There were a certain number of private pipelines before the war.
When I lived in Yorkshire, the United Steel Company laid a line of about 18 miles of gas pipe from one of its coke ovens to a steelworks North of Sheffield. That was regarded as one of the biggest pipelines of its kind in the world at the time. I believe that it was a 12 in. or 18 in. line over a distance of about 15 miles. There is plenty of experience in this country about the laying of pipelines, and we need have no fear that the job cannot be done properly.
What appealed to me about the Bill was that it envisaged a multi-user type of pipeline which would be a great advantage to the transport system for the carriage of not only oil and petrol, but liquids like milk. The carriage of such liquids would not affect amenities, for the pipelines would be hidden under the ground. I understand that the promoters of the Bill would accept the Motion of my hon. Friend the Member for Nantwich (Mr. Grant-Ferris), which says:
That it be an Instruction to the Committee on the Bill to include a Clause to ensure that wherever the Transport Authority requires the promoters to bury or otherwise conceal the pipeline this shall be done.
The Bill also appealed to me because the pipeline envisaged would be of assistance to the finances of the British Transport Commission. In Essex the line would be laid along the railway lines of the Transport Commission and the promoters would have to pay money for the wayleaves. If the line were carried on through Buckinghamshire up to the Merseyside, I understand that it would be laid along the Grand Union Canal, and again the promoters would pay money to the Commission. The Bill has many merits.

Mrs. Hart: The British Transport Commission, I understand, has an option to take part in further construction as far as Merseyside. If it decided that it did not want to take that option, the


pipeline company would be involved in difficulty, and might have to work out a completely new route.

Mr. Gresham Cooke: That is true. If the Transport Commission did not want it on its land another line would have to be found, but I think the Commission would think twice before refusing an offer of fairly easy money for the laying of this pipeline.
In any event, as my hon. Friend said, the promoters are willing to withdraw the Bill after the assurance given by my right hon. Friend. I express the hope that general legislation will be proceeded with very quicky, if possible in the next Session. I do not think there should be great difficulty over this matter.
I draw the attention of my right hon. Friend to the decree of the French Parliament, Decree 59/645 of 16th May, 1959, in which, over fourteen pages, the French Government have gone into great detail about the requirements of pipelines in France. The French have had considerable experience which we could imitate. As my hon. Friend the Member for Willesden, East (Mr. Skeet) said, there is a pipeline from Havre to Paris of 150 miles with a capacity of over 2 million tons of oil and other products a year. If it would interest the hon. Member for Ashfield (Mr. Warbey), that pipeline, the Trapil pipeline, is only 10 ins. in diameter but, because it is carrying the finished products of the oil industry, it is quite capable of transporting over 2 million tons of oil a year from Havre to Paris.

Mr. Warbey: I was referring to the suggestion that at some time in the future this pipeline should carry some other substance besides fluids. This is actually referred to in the Bill, apart from what the promoters have said about it. I suggest that a 10-in. pipeline would not be suitable for carrying solids or substantial volumes of traffic which are expected in future.

Mr. Gresham Cooke: Solids would have to be carried along in the stream of liquids. I am not an expert, but I think it could be done in a 10-in. pipeline.
With regard to the general legislation which I hope my right hon. Friend will be introducing in the autumn, it seems that the feeling of the House today is

that there should be a supervisory body which should control the routes of pipeline operators. There is plenty of precedent for that. The Air Registration Board tells airlines which routes they may follow and licensing authorities for road and bus transport, in particular for bus transport, lay down the best routes for companies.
We ought to see in this legislation plenty of opportunity for public inquiries at which owners of pieces of land and others could make their objections heard before a pipeline was laid. It seems that it should not be difficult to produce legislation of a general character in which all sorts of operators, perhaps nationalised corporations such as the British Transport Commission and also private operators, could lay these lines. I hope that we shall see private operators laying lines about the country. Then I think we should get the full benefit of speed of operation.
As has been pointed out in the debate, in the last century the railways did a wonderful job in building several hundred miles of railways a year. The backbone of the railway system was built in the ten years from 1840 to 1850. Likewise, we could see private enterprise companies laying a series of pipelines throughout the country to meet their needs and the needs of the public. I hope that my right hon. Friend will not fall into the trap of setting up any public corporation to build the pipelines because, as a member of the Estimates Committee which from time to time has to examine accounts, I should be horrified at the thought of having to examine the accounts of a public corporation and the possible losses which might follow.
I throw out the idea to my right hon. Friend without in any way wishing to derogate powers from him or his Ministry. As I see it, these pipelines will develop to carry a large number of products, not only heavy oil, but petroleum products and other sorts of liquid such as milk. In the end they will to an extent take the place of road transport and railway transport. We ought to look on these pipelines of the future as part of the transport system of the country. I suppose that logically we should envisage them being supervised eventually by the Ministry of Transport. I do not want to take away from the powers of my right hon. Friend, although perhaps


he will find himself overloaded in the future, but the day will come when we ought to look upon these pipelines as part of the transport system which will relieve road congestion by carrying oil and other liquids about the country.
I congratulate the promoters of the Bill on bringing it forward. I hope that they will not feel that their money has been wasted. I think that they have given us a good object lesson of what can be done. In my opinion we have plenty of experience in this country, from before, during and after the war, and experience overseas, in laying pipelines which can take care of public interest and benefit the country without doing harm to any individual.

Mr. Gunter: I take it from his last remarks that when the hon. Member talks of this as part of the general transport system, he means that he is in favour of a co-ordinated integrated transport service?

Mr. Gresham Cooke: I will not go so far as to say that, but I am certainly in favour of the supervision of the routes along which these pipelines should be laid.

Mr. Grant-Ferris: On behalf of the promoters of the Bill, may I ask the leave of the House to make a short statement?

Mr. Speaker: By the leave of the House.

Mr. Grant-Ferris: The promoters are very well satisfied with the statement made by my right hon. Friend the Minister and feel that it gives them confidence to go ahead with planning for the future. Therefore, if the mover of the Amendment would see fit to withdraw his Amendment, I would then, if I may rise again, ask leave to withdraw the Bill.

Mr. Speaker: I am obliged to the hon. Member. I will now put the Question and then we shall see.
The Question is that "now" stand part of the Question.

Mr. Corfield: I am willing to withdraw the Amendment on the undertaking which my hon. Friend has given. I therefore beg to ask leave to withdraw the Amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Main Question again proposed.

Mr. Grant-Ferris: I am obliged to my hon. Friend. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the Motion.

Motion, by leave, withdrawn.

Bill withdrawn.

Orders of the Day — SUPPLY

Again considered in Committee.

Original Question again proposed.

Whereupon Motion made, and Question, That the Chairman do report Progress and ask leave to sit again [Mr. Gibson-Watt]—put and agreed to.

Committee report Progress; to sit again Tomorrow.

Orders of the Day — FARM, CAITHNESS (CATTLE SUBSIDY)

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Gibson-Watt.]

9.37 p.m.

Sir David Robertson: The matter which I raise is of some importance. It concerns the integrity of the public service in the Scottish Office and the possible misuse of public funds.
I raised this matter with the Secretary of State for Scotland by letter on 15th December, following a practice which I have always carried out in the House of never raising anything on the Floor of the House by Question or in other way before writing to the Minister and giving him the facts and asking him to make an investigation. Four months later, as there has been no adequate investigation, I am compelled to come here tonight and to give details of this matter.
In November last, I received representations from my constituency about the wrongful payment of hill cattle subsidy to Borgie Mains Farm, Caithness. I caused inquiries to be made and I found that the whole of the agricultural community which is the biggest of all the populations in Caithness, knew all about this matter. All the farmers agreed that Borgie Mains Farm did not qualify for hill cattle subsidy; it was far above the


standard. They asked that I should raise the matter in the House. I explained that I should require of them proof of the statements which they made and the view which they held, for that is the responsibility imposed on every private Member, and I got it.
Before I received it, I had a visit on 7th December from three Caithness farmers who came to London for the Smithfield Show. I asked them what they knew about it—and they all knew a great deal about it. In fact, one of them, Mr. Colin Campbell, of Stanstill Farm, told me that because Borgie Mains received hill cattle subsidy, he had demanded that the whole of his farm at Stanstill, part of which was awarded the hill cattle subsidy, should get the subsidy. He made his claim for it and supported his claim by stating that if he did not get it he would come to me.
It was apparent from what I learned from these men that this was not only a rumour and that there was something sinister behind it. A few days later I received all the proof. I had better read part of the evidence which came to me. It was a report by a senior inspector who made the inspection. It began by stating that the application for subsidy was received by the Department of Agriculture on 9th June, 1952. This is a typical Government Departmental minute. Below that statement is written, "Refusal. The holding is considered above standard. Please see attached report." I have the report here. It states:
Hill cattle subsidy. Applicant Brigadier G. D. K. Murray, Borgie House, Castletown. The farm in question is Borgie Mains which is worked as a unit with Netherside…and the holding adjoins. An inspection was made on 15th September, 1953, accompanied by applicant and Mr. Rae. After going over the holding and having some considerable discussion, Brigadier Murray agreed that the hill cattle subsidy was never intended for farms such as his, although he feeds no cattle or sheep or sells milk. The holding is now well above standard to qualify as hill-farming land or livestock-rearing land. While applicant is quite reconciled to the fact that no subsidy will be forthcoming, some care should be taken in the wording of the notification to him to save repercussions. I suggest that it be worded as follows:—With reference to your application for hill cattle subsidy in respect of cattle at Borgie Mains and following an inspection made on 15th inst."—
that was 15th September, 1953—
by two of the Department's livestock inspectors accompanied by yourself, the Department

have come to the decision that your holding is above standard and cannot therefore be classed as 'hill land' in terms of the scheme.
It goes on:
No further explanation is necessary and I am sure it will be accepted but if further elaboration is added it is possible he may take exception to some of the remarks as has happened in other cases.
That letter is signed "J. Dean" and was addressed to the Department of Agriculture for Scotland in Edinburgh.
Nothing happened for eight months that is recorded in these papers, except that it is known that Brigadier Murray went to Edinburgh where, presumably, he interviewed the Permanent Under-Secretary of the Department of Agriculture for Scotland—

The Joint Under-Secretary of State for Scotland (Mr. Gilmour Leburn): Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Sir D. Robertson: So soon? I have to make this case, and it is not the easiest case to make.
As I say, Brigadier Murray interviewed this man. I cannot prove that this visit took place—there is a hiatus of eight months—but I am told by men of standing, whose word I would take anywhere, that this visit was made. At any rate, if it was not made, something must have been made. Here is a man who agreed with two senior, well-qualified inspectors that his holding did not qualify yet, after eight months, the holding gets the full subsidy.
I can only assume that this man, who is a man of importance—convenor of the county council, and duty-lieutenant of the county—must have some extraordinary influence that can over-ride the decisions of these inspectors. These inspectors are not men picked up off the street. They are men who have been making inspections for years all over the northern counties of Scotland. As I have said, they decided that his farm could not qualify. I do not think that the Secretary of State would make excuses, because there has been plenty of time in the four months during which I have been pressing him to make the investigation, but I would ask him to tell us what influence, what pull, this man has that caused this situation to be over-turned.
The letter that I read out was dated 15th September, 1953. The next bears the date 19th January, 1954. It is addressed to Brigadier Murray, and reads:

"Dear Sir,

Hill Cattle (Scotland) Scheme, 1951.

I regret the delay that has taken place in reaching a decision on your application for hill cattle subsidy in 1952 and 1953. As you know the Department have been considering the question of the eligibility of your land, and in all the circumstances, they have now decided that it should continue to be regarded as qualifying under the above mentioned scheme.

It is proposed to settle your claim as follows:

1952 Hill cattle. £273—39 cattle at £7 per head (the number of eligible cattle as shown in your agricultural returns at 4th June, 1952).

1952 Winter keep. £117—39 cattle at £3 per head (this payment is based on the number of cattle approved for hill cattle subsidy).

1953 Hill cattle. £420—42 cattle at £10 a head.

Payable orders for the amounts shown will be sent to you at an early date."

On the following day, 20th January, 1954, Brigadier Murray acknowledged payment.

These payments have been made annually ever since. If they are on the same scale as that shown in the letter it means that over £4,000 has been paid in respect of a farm that two well-qualified inspectors condemned out of hand as not qualifying under the scheme. Does the Joint Under-Secretary want to intervene in regard to what I have read out?

Mr. Leburn: I only wanted to ask the hon. Gentleman for information about the dates of the eight-month period which he says elapsed between the time of the inspector's report in 1953 and the next inspection, but I shall not press him.

Sir D. Robertson: I am most anxious to answer the hon. Gentleman's questions. The first report I read referred to an inspection made on 15th September. Presumably this letter was written a day or two days afterwards—I beg pardon. I was in error when I said eight months. I beg pardon of the House for that mistake. The period was September to January—four months, not eight. I regret the error.
I come back to Mr. Colin Campbell, to whom I referred as one of three

farmers who saw me. He knew all about Borgie. It was because of the Borgie situation that he was determined to get a similar subsidy for his Standstill Farm, which is very near to Borgie. Mr. Campbell told me that his land was inferior to that at Borgie; that his calves got £15 less per head in the markets as compared with those from Borgie, and that his lambs got £3 less. Those are big differences to men who live by raising sheep and cattle. He also said that Borgie produces pedigree stocks—pedigree bulls that sell, sometimes, for £500 or more at Perth sales. That kind of farm is not entitled to the hill cattle subsidy.
Mr. Campbell made his application, and a very lengthy correspondence ensued. At an early date in the correspondence he said that if he did not get the subsidy for which he asked he would refer the case to me. I have in this file a series of copies of letters and copies of minutes that passed between the applicant, Mr. Campbell, and various officials at St. Andrew's House. The first is the application. The second is a letter from Mr. Dean to a Mr. Macdonald saying that the case was taking quite a long time because of illness and that Mr. Rae, the inspector, was ill. It states that:
On 21st September, 1959. I examined the holding in the company of Mr. Morton, and Mr. MacKenzie, senior general inspector for the area, and the applicant. We did not disclose to the applicant our agreed opinion but we have decided that the unclassified part of the farm is well above standard for hill cattle subsidy and suitable for growing crops for sale to a material extent. A considerable amount of grain is used on the farm being fed to sheep and cattle and it is true to say that the place is well farmed compared to many Caithness farms but we still cannot agree to have the entire holding approved for hill cattle subsidy, or every Caithness farm would be eligible.
So the original crime committed in respect of Borgie was that if this farm was admitted, all farms would need to be brought in. That is how serious the first crime was. Crime begets crime. That has happened in this case.
On 26th November, the application was refused following the decision of these men that the farm did not qualify. Mr. Campbell, however, returned to the attack. He talked about his calves making less and he said that he was going to Edinburgh on the Friday and wanted to see the officials there and


would then come to London to see me and bring the matter to my notice. At one time, I was a civil servant occupying a senior position. Had any man said that to me, I would immediately have said, "Go to your M.P." I would have ordered him to do so. That is what I should expect of any official. I am referred to a dozen times in these letters, but nobody ever suggested that Mr. Campbell should come to me.
All that happened was that a conspiracy was entered into to ensure that he did not come to me. That can only come about by buying him off. That is exactly what took place. I do not want to weary the House by reading all these documents, but I shall send them to a Scottish judge, because they are the most deplorable record of a conspiracy that I have ever read. Every move was an attempt to avoid this man coming to his Member of Parliament. People were much more concerned about hiding it, cloaking it up. They had to cloak the first crime. This was the second one.
One of the worst features of the case is that the civil servants concerned knew all about this in St. Andrew's House and in the large office in Thurso. It must be a demoralising thing for them to be in the Government service and to feel that they are forced to agree to things like this and for the men writing these matters to be forced to enter into these subterfuges. I have never known a more shocking state of affairs.
I am sorry that the Secretary of State for Scotland is not here tonight. He should have been here to deal with the matter. I wrote to him on 15th December, but I need not read the letter now. I clearly indicated that the evidence which I have given tonight was in my possession. I said that in view of these disquieting allegations, I presumed that he would think it proper to make immediate inquiries. All that happened was that I received a letter which, I am certain, the Secretary of State did not write. It may well be that the letter was written by the official who was the prime mover in this shabby business. I cannot imagine that it ever got to Ministerial level, either at the time or now.
I am deeply grieved that the Secretary of State had to write me as he did. I

will not weary the House by reading the nonsense. I sent it to my farmer friends in Caithness. They said that they had never seen anything like it. I feel that way, too. Such action may, of course, have been deliberate. Perhaps some hon. Members would have accepted it, sent it on to the constituent and said, "I have done my best, but that is what the Minister says". I took a contrary view and on 20th March I wrote the Minister two letters, one in respect of Borgie and the other in respect of Stanstill, giving him further particulars, which he wanted. I gave chapter and verse.
At the same time, I put down two Written Questions to avoid publicity. I had been trying all the time to avoid publicity. A case of this kind is distasteful to me, as, I imagine, it is to most hon. Members. I do not like to be concerned in it, but it is my duty. I did not run away from it, as the Secretary of State did. I accepted the responsibility. The Answers which I was given to my Questions were simply nonsense. They are on the record, if anybody wants to read them, in HANSARD of 24th March.
Oddly enough, I came to you, Mr. Speaker, at that time when I got those Answers, because they were wholly wrong. I asked for an Adjournment debate, and I succeeded in getting it. Immediately I asked for an Adjournment debate, the whole attitude in the Scottish Office changed. Two officials were sent up to the office in Thurso. They thought that that was where all the trouble emanated from. It did not. It emanated because of the crime that was committed. The officers of the head office in Edinburgh are equally concerned.
These officials for whom I am speaking are good citizens. They do not like to be tarnished with things like this happening, but they are doing it under orders from above. These two inspectors went up to Thurso. One of them spoke of having a high regard for me, but he was probing to discover where the leakage to me came from and how it got to me. How could it fail to get to me if the men are of the quality that I know them to be? If any attempt is made at victimisation of these men, this House will have an awful lot to say about it. That is the story and it is one that must be dealt with. At this


late hour, I can ask for nothing less than a public inquiry. I hope that it will come about.

9.58 p.m.

The Joint Under-Secretary of State for Scotland (Mr. Gilmour Leburn): I have listened with great interest to the speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Caithness and Sutherland (Sir D. Robertson) concerning the eligibility of Borgie Mains Farm for hill cattle subsidy. He has made some serious charges and I hope that before I sit down I can satisfy him and the House that they are completely unfounded.
The hill cattle subsidy is intended to encourage hill and upland farmers to establish permanent breeding herds of cattle on their farms. It has been very successful in doing just that. In the majority of cases, there is no difficulty in assessing eligibility, but, as the House appreciates, there is no clearly defined demarcation line between eligible and ineligible farms—such as altitude or acreage—and at the borderline it becomes a matter of judgment. I make it clear that there is no clear yardstick in this matter and that there is the borderline case.
In the past, my hon. Friend has pressed vigorously for the inclusion in the scheme of a number of Caithness farms which had been regarded as ineligible. As my hon. Friend will remember, on consideration we were able to admit one or two of these cases.

Sir D. Robertson: On what date was that?

Mr. Leburn: Some years ago.

Sir D. Robertson: Ten years ago?

Mr. Leburn: Some years ago.
I make no attempt to conceal this. Borgie Mains is a borderline case. I need hardly tell the House that in administering any subsidy scheme a line must be drawn somewhere so that decisions may be contained within the limits of the requirements laid down by Parliament. Inevitably, difficult cases arise, and Borgie Mains is one of them. Caithness as an area produces many problems in this connection.

It being Ten o'clock, the Motion for the Adjournment of the House lapsed, without Question put.

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Gibson-Watt.]

Mr. Leburn: My hon. Friend and even people who, like myself, lack his intimate knowledge of the district know only too well the difficulties with which farmers in Caithness have to contend. In assessing eligibility we must take many factors into account. Caithness seems to produce more difficult cases than most other areas in Scotland.
The subsidy for cattle kept on hills and uplands was introduced in 1941 and until 1947 various schemes were administered by the war-time county agricultural executive Committees. Borgie Mains was accepted in its entirety as eligible for subsidy under these schemes. This was the judgment of the committee of farmers, landowners and smallholders who formed the membership of the Caithness Agricultural Executive Committee. I make it clear that the tenant of Borgie Mains, who now farms Borgie Mains and who is chairman of the present agricultural executive committee for the area, was not a member of the committee at that time.
With the passing of the Hill Farming Act, 1946, the subsidy was given permanent statutory basis by the Hill Cattle (Scotland) Scheme, 1947, and the direct administration of the scheme was undertaken by the Department of Agriculture. Having regard to the terms of the statutory scheme and the need for reasonable uniformity of standards over the country as a whole, the Department felt that it was its duty to review farms throughout the country which were receiving the subsidy. It was the intention in 1947 to vet all Caithness applications by inspecting the farms. However, shortage of inspectors precluded this and it was found necessary to base approvals for that year, 1947, on the recommendations made by the agricultural executive committees in 1946 under the old schemes.
In 1948, however, all farms had been inspected and assessed. As a result, it was proposed that 64 farms in the County of Caithness should no longer get the subsidy. Borgie Mains was one of those 64 farms. As can be imagined, this view was not acceptable to Caithness farmers. Representations were received from a number of the farmers who had been


turned down and from the local branch of the National Farmers' Union of Scotland through their headquarters.
A meeting between the N.F.U. and the Department of Agriculture, was held in August, 1949. As a result, the 64 cases were reviewed after a further inspection. Following the review, the Department decided that 33 of the 64 farms should once more be accepted as eligible. Borgie Mains was one of the 33. Of the 31 applicants in respect of whom refusal of subsidy was maintained after the 1949 review, the majority accepted the position, but eight of them continued to protest through the N.F.U. My hon. Friend also became active on their behalf.

Sir D. Robertson: At their request.

Mr. Leburn: Certainly.
I understand that my hon. Friend, together with some of his constituents, had a meeting in July, 1950, with the then Under-Secretary of State for Scotland. Following that meeting, a further investigation of the eight farms was carried out by the Department's chief inspector. As a result, one of the eight was accepted as eligible. I emphasise that all this happened between 1941 and 1950.
The pressure continued, however, and the position was again reviewed in 1953 by the then Under-Secretary of State for Scotland, and the previous decision was upheld. It was during the time of that review that the Borgie Mains payment of subsidy was held in abeyance pending the outcome of the review. In 1957, alter the making of the present scheme, one other of the eight was accepted as eligible.
If I may recapitulate, the position therefore is that Borgie Mains was regarded as eligible during the wartime period, was considered as ineligible in 1948 along with 63 other farms, but was re-assessed following the first review of the Caithness position that was carried out following local protests. It is fair to say that although it is a borderline case it is by no means the most borderline case in Caithness.

Sir D. Robertson: The Joint Under-Secretary is ranging way back to 1947, which has nothing whatever to do with this case. He has omitted to tell the

House that it is under the Hill Cattle (Scotland) Act, 1951, that this complaint is based. It was not anything that was just drifting along since 1947. Another Act of Parliament had come in—the 1951 Act which we are discussing.

Mr. Leburn: But all the schemes have very largely been the same.
In a case of this sort there is obvious room for differences of opinion and I would not pretend that such differences have not arisen within the Department of Agriculture. My hon. Friend quoted the opinions of the Department's technical officers and he has been at pains to show that these gave the view that Borgie Mains should not be included in the farms eligible for hill cattle subsidy. But I assure my hon. Friend that other senior technical officers, in the light of conditions both in Caithness and elsewhere in Scotland, have expressed a contrary opinion.
It is very important to appreciate that recommendations and reports from inspectors on the spot are not automatically accepted, otherwise there would be no need for chief livestock inspectors and for decisions to be taken at the centre. It is also very important that we should have uniformity throughout the country and I assure the House that contrary opinions as to whether or not Borgie Mains was eligible were expressed, as opposed to those quoted by my hon. Friend. I need not stress to the House the necessity of doing all we can to achieve uniformity in the administration of these schemes throughout Scotland.
My hon. Friend mentioned the question of pedigree cattle being carried on Borgie Mains Farm. He suggested that pedigree herds should not be accepted for subsidy. I find it difficult to see the relevance of this suggestion. There is nothing in the Statutory Instrument to suggest that such herds should not have the subsidy and it has never been our practice to discriminate against them. Indeed, it would be quite wrong for us to do so, since it is to such herds that we must look for our breeding stock and on which we must rely for the maintenance of the quality of our beef which means so much to the Scottish economy.
In view of the raising of this matter by my hon. Friend, I have personally


gone into all the facts of the case and I assure the House that I am satisfied that the decision that Borgie Mains is eligible for the hill cattle subsidy is the correct one and is strictly in accordance with the standards applied both in Caithness and throughout the rest of Scotland.
I should like to turn for a moment to the case of Stanstill Farm. It is not, strictly speaking, the subject of this debate, but my hon. Friend has raised it and I will try to deal with it. The facts are that in 1952 the occupier of this farm claimed hill cattle subsidy in respect of cattle kept on that portion of the farm which he then claimed to be eligible land under the scheme, namely, about 600 acres out of a total of 1,160 acres. His claim at that time was paid in full as were similar claims for the years 1953, 1954, 1955 and 1956. In other words, during those five years the farmer himself only sought subsidy for stock in respect of some 600 acres. In 1957, the occupier of Stanstill Farm claimed that the whole of his farm was eligible, but payment was restricted to the cattle carried on the hill area of some 600 acres.
In 1958, the occupier again claimed in respect of the larger area and thereafter continued to press a claim to have the whole of his farm treated as eligible. As a result of this, the Department's chief livestock inspector made a special inspection of Stanstill Farm in the spring of 1960.
I have to admit that I personally gave approval to the inspection taking place. Furthermore, in giving that approval, I also agreed—and I think I should admit this to the House—that during that inspection the farmer should not be attended by his Member of Parliament or a member of the N.F.U., because I felt it was right that the chief livestock inspector should be allowed to carry out his inspection in the best way he thought fit; but, of course, the farmer himself was given every opportunity to attend and to make what representations he wished.
Following this inspection, it was decided that the whole of the farm could not be accepted as eligible land, but that under the terms of the scheme approval could be given to the cattle being wintered away from the eligible portion of the farm. Here again, we have a question

of judgment, a difficult question, as these questions of judgment often are, and I very much hope that my hon. Friend will not suggest that the decision was come to on any other grounds than grounds of merit, because, if he does, I should like to suggest to him that his logic is very wobbly. If bandying about the name of a Member of Parliament is to influence decisions in a matter such as this—to influence them in either a favourable or an unfavourable way—then every hon. Member and every Minister trying to administer a Government Department will find himself in a hopeless position.
My hon. Friend has made certain suggestions about the question of information. Tonight I do not profess to know how my hon. Friend has obtained his information about official reports, but, as he said, he sent a letter to my right hon. Friend. We have already been aware that my hon. Friend had received such information and my right hon. Friend is investigating whether an official has acted improperly. I should like to suggest that it goes no further than that. It is just to see whether an official has acted improperly. I suggest that my right hon. Friend would have been gravely failing in his duty if he had not at least investigated the facts of the matter.
I only want to say one other thing. I am a little shocked that my hon. Friend should attack one who is highly regarded in his county. I am sure that it should not have been done here, under the cloak of Parliament. I in no way resent my hon. Friend's attacking me, but I resent very much his attacking civil servants in a case of this kind. By all means put all the blame on me, and address the attack to me, but I am sure that this House does not sympathise with a Member who attacks civil servants.
Finally, I wish to assure the House again that I have gone into both of these cases most thoroughly, and I am satisfied that the right decisions have been taken in both cases.

Sir D. Robertson: Will my hon. Friend say who was the senior inspector who was called in to inspect this farm? We know that a Mr. Bean came up, and I am informed that he took the same decision about Borgie Mains as Mr. Rae and Mr. Dean. I do not know of any


other inspection that was made. It seems inconceivable that any chairborne official in St. Andrew's House should be in a position to override inspectors who took this decision.

Mr. Leburn: That is the point of my case. There would be no need for chief livestock inspectors if no occasion arose to overrule other inspectors' decisions. We could have decisions taken by junior inspectors all over the country, but we must have uniformity. The chief inspector to whom I referred was the chief inspector of the Department of Agriculture at St. Andrew's House.

10.16 p.m.

Mr. Thomas Fraser: As the Joint Under-Secretary of State said, I have been personally concerned with these matters, particularly in the County of Caithness, in years gone by. He mentioned a meeting in St. Andrew's House in July, 1950, which was taken by the then Joint Under-Secretary of State. I was then Joint Under-Secretary of State.
The Joint Under-Secretary of State says that it is sometimes difficult to judge the eligibility or ineligibility of farms, or parts of farms, to qualify for the hill cattle subsidy under this scheme. He has made it clear that Borgie Mains has all along been a borderline case, although he says that there are other even more borderline cases. I do not know how one gets variations on borderline cases.
The hon. Member for Caithness and Sutherland (Sir D. Robertson) has brought with him a file which shows what investigations and decisions and recommendations have been made from time to time. It pains me very much indeed that he should be able, on the basis of the information given to him in those files, to allege that the views of those who had inspected were rejected by someone who had not inspected. If this is so, then there is something here to inquire into.
The hon. Gentleman showed me some of the documents which he has, and, according to the information contained in them, the chief inspector visited and recommended against. If that is so, then it seems to me to be wrong that the subsidy should be paid. If it is not so, then it is up to the Joint Under-Secretary of State to have a public inquiry to show that somebody has been telling lies.
We must consider what the criteria are in deciding whether or not a subsidy should be paid. The first is that the cows have to be mother cows, and they have to be on the hill for a substantial part of the year. They have to be on hill land as defined in the scheme. To explain this to the House, I will read the definition in the scheme, which says:
'hill land' means land which is livestock rearing land as defined in subsection (3) of section 1 of the Livestock Rearing Act, 1951, that is to say, land situated in an area consisting predominantly of mountains, hills or heath, being land which is, or by improvement could be made, suitable for use for the breeding, rearing and maintenance of sheep or cattle but not for the carrying on, to any material extent, of dairy farming, the production, to any material extent, of fat sheep or fat cattle, or the production of crops in quantity materially greater than that necessary to feed the number of sheep or cattle capable of being maintained on the land.
One can only form a judgment as to whether this criterion is fulfilled by personally inspecting the land and being qualified to do so. This is not a matter on which even the Minister can rightly reach a conclusion, nor is it a matter on which someone else sitting in St. Andrew's House can reach a decision. It is something on which only someone who has visited the premises can form a view.
When the hon. Member for Caithness and Sutherland came to see me on more than one occasion in 1950 and 1951, pleading for the admission of certain farms for subsidy, I invariably told him that I was incapable of judging whether a farm should or should not qualify. Being in office, I had to ensure that we had men in the employment of the Department who were capable of making this judgment. When I gave them a job to do it was my responsibility to take their advice. There is no other way of administering the scheme. I would not listen to any particular farmer who came to me to plead for subsidy because I had to tell him that I had been advised by my experts and that I could not sit down and negotiate further with him.
Can the Under-Secretary of State inform the House whether the senior inspector recommended against the admission of this farm on the basis of a visit, or on the basis of a written submission? When I bad responsibility for this matter, I thought that it was wrong even for the N.F.U. to argue about


individual cases or the extent of the hill land on any farm. This is a highly technical business. If this is the kind of matter on which a decision can be reached after pressure being applied, then we should scrap the scheme altogether.
In this case, there seems to be evidence to suggest that the farmer from Stanstill Farm was given a subsidy in respect of an area of land, and that he regarded this as being inadequate. As a result of pressing his claim—this may be incorrect, but the evidence seems to point to it—it was not a question of enlarging the acreage of land on his farm that would qualify. It was merely a matter of saying that, instead of having so many cattle, he would get the subsidy in respect of so many additional cattle. It is wrong to administer the scheme in that way. One or the other.
The hon. Member for Caithness and Sutherland cannot be happy with things as they are. I am not happy. I cannot say how sad I am to think of the integrity of public servants being questioned in this way. I suppose I feel that even more keenly because they happen to be civil servants in the Scottish Office, with which I was associated for a number of years. I have nothing but respect and regard for the civil servants with whom I worked for several years. I never found any of them in whom I did not have the utmost trust. Because I have such regard, respect and trust for them and because I want to see our public service continuing to enjoy the respect of the whole nation, and regarded as a body of people entirely beyond suspicion, I do not want to see allegations such as those made by the hon. Member for Caithness and Sutherland hanging about after they have been made publicly.
If the hon. Gentleman has ground for believing that things are wrong, he has a public duty—

Sir D. Robertson: Certainly.

Mr. Fraser: —to expose them. I am not saying that if, on the evidence these things are wrong, he should cover it up. Like any of us, the hon. Gentleman has a public duty to bring these things out into the open, after first giving the Minister an opportunity to put things right.

Sir D. Robertson: Which I did.

Mr. Fraser: The hon. Gentleman says that he did.
If that is not done, he has no choice but to do it publicly. Having done it publicly, and if these criticisms are not fully rebutted, it seems to me that the only thing to do is for the Secretary of State to order a public inquiry into the whole business. It may seem that either the hon. Member for Caithness and Sutherland, or the people who informed him, will come badly out of the inquiry. That is a risk the hon. Gentleman takes in calling for a public inquiry. But if, on the other hand, as the hon. Gentleman has said tonight, people have taken certain decisions involving the expenditure of public money under pressure, it will come out in the public inquiry, and I think that the public service would be better for that happening.
That is how I feel about it. It is the only way in which anyone can feel. The hon. Gentleman said that he was willing to give the whole file to a Scottish judge. I think that it would be better for the Secretary of State to select the Scottish judge to whom the hon. Gentleman should give the file.

Question put and agreed to.

Adjourned accordingly at twenty-seven minutes past Ten o'clock.